Tag Archives: nuclear waste

Today’s Deseret News is reporting the proposal of a bill in the U.S. House and Senate that would keep nuclear waste stored on site where it is generated. This would mean that the PFS Project in Utah would potentially be squashed.

A few days ago I posted about two investors withdrawing from the venture to store nuclear waste on the Goshute Reservation in Utah.
The Deseret News has reported today that a third investor, Florida Power and Light Co., has withdrawn from the venture.

The article gives credit to U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch for approaching the three investors and getting them to change their minds about supporting the PFS project. Hatch apparently is approaching the other investors as well.
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Cautious optimism is the buzz for opposition to storing nuclear waste in Utah.

Two investors in Private Fuel Storage have withdrawn their support in the venture to store nuclear waste on the Goshute Reservation in Utah.

Xcel Energy was one of those supporters, with 34% responsibility for PFS’s budget.

Environmentalists are optimistic that this could mean the demise of PFS, while acknowledging at the same time that this is not necessarily an end to the venture.

PFS officials claim that there are other investors waiting to be part of the project.

Elected officials are optimistic that PFS will not realize its vision of a waste repository in Utah’s west desert.

Utah officials and activists expected the U.S. Supreme Court to reject its case of appeal of a lower court ruling that denied a set of laws from being implemented that would have blocked the storage of high level nuclear waste in Utah.

Private Fuel Storage, the coalition that wants to store the waste in Utah’s west desert in Goshute Reservation land, is of course relieved with this recent news.

The article in today’s Salt Lake Tribune has an archive of links to past articles on the issue.

At the end of the article is a series of bulleted points on “what lies ahead” in this struggle. The last point states that:
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has proposed a plan to keep waste at the nuclear reactors that produced it until it can be reprocessed. It has the support of Utah’s governor and congressional delegation, with the exception of Sen. Orrin Hatch.

The Deseret News Editorial today is recognizes the complexity of the nation’s nuclear waste storage and advocates not using our southwestern states as dumping grounds.

An ariticle in the business section of the same paper reports that an amendment aimed at promoting nuclear power in Utah has been dropped by Utah legislators.

Utah has petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals to revoke federal approval of a proposal to store high-level nuclear waste in the state.

Utah is asking the court to “declare that the NRC’s decisions relating to the PFS license application are arbitrary and capricious and inconsistent with applicable law; (and) direct the NRC to revoke any license” granted to the facility.

U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch has publicly supported this appeal. However he has also stated publicly that he has requested Private Fuel Storage owners Xcel Energy to “look elsewhere” for nuke waste storage.

I wonder if Orrin means keep the spent fuel where it’s **created**???