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| September 7th, 2006 |
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Media Contact(s): Peter Carr (202) 224-9854,
Jared Whitley (202) 224-0134 |
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UTAHNS DELIVER KILLING BLOW TO SKULL VALLEY NUKE WASTE PLAN
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| Image provided courtesy of kued.org/skullvalley |
Washington – The Department of Interior (DOI) today told Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) that it has denied Private Fuel Storage’s (PFS) plan to store spent nuclear fuel at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele, Utah. The DOI based its decision on letters and calls from thousands of Utahns who rejected the proposal to store nuclear material in Skull Valley – a site dangerously close to the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) where live ordnance is used directly under the low-level flight path of 7,000 F-16s every year.
“PFS is dead. It’s that simple,” Hatch said. “Storing nuclear waste in Skull Valley would have put Utahns on a collision course with catastrophe. Transporting and storing nuclear fuel so close to an active military training ground was a recipe for environmental disaster. I’m relieved that the DOI realized that and killed the Skull Valley plan.”
In December 2005, Hatch pushed the White House and the Department of the Interior to re-open a comment period to let Utahns have a say on PFS’s applications for transportation routes across Bureau of Land Management land. In a rare move, the government complied with the request and allowed Utahns to make the case for whether or not the applications were in the public interest. The DOI decided they were not.
“We’re indebted to the thousands of Utahns who took the time to write the DOI on this issue,” Hatch said. “It proves that every citizen can make a difference – Utahns spoke, and the DOI listened.”
The viability of the Skull Valley plan rested on the DOI’s approval of either a rail spur across BLM land to Skull Valley or an intermodal transfer facility on BLM land to transfer the spent fuel to trucks, which would transport the casks of spent fuel to the site along existing roads. Last year, the united Utah delegation, led by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), successfully passed wilderness legislation that blocked potential attempts to build a rail spur on federal lands near the range and the Goshute reservation. Today’s decision both blocks the option of fuel transportation via truck and makes constructing the site impossible.
“Without a lease to store the fuel or permission to transport it, PFS is left without a leg to stand on,” Hatch said. “Some people may say there is still a chance that PFS could pull this off, but that’s hogwash. With today’s DOI decision, the PFS plan has been burned to the ground. We may need to sort through the ashes and put out a few embers, but other than that, it’s stone cold dead.”
Last fall, Hatch convinced a majority of PFS shareholders to pull away from the company, which likely derails any reaction PFS might take to this decision.
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