Tag Archives: private fuel storage

Private Fuel Storage Chairman John Parkyn is still holding out for an interim nuclear waste storage site in Utah, according to a Deseret News article this morning.

Parkyn will not release any details on his “plans”.

The article also mentions the proposal of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry’s lobbying organization, to offer tens of millions of dollars, increasing as time progresses, to state sthat is approved to host an interim storage site.

The waste needs to stay in the state in which it is generated. The problems inherent with sending nuclear waste to other states are monumental (e.g., accident/exposure risk), not to mention the fact that states such as Utah don’t want the waste.

Today’s News

Summary of the news [Salt Lake Tribune]

The Salt Lake Tribune published this article: Panel rejects PFS nuclear storage–
U.S. Senate: A subcommittee votes to allow facilties only in states with reactors.

A Senate panel dealt a blow to Private Fuel Storage’s plan to build temporary nuclear storage in Utah on Tuesday, voting in favor of short-term storage, but specifically prohibiting storage at the PFS facility.
The Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee included $10 million for the temporary storage facilities, but requires them to be federally run and located in states that have nuclear reactors.
The spent nuclear fuel would be kept there until a technology can be developed to extract the reusable parts of the fuel and dispose of the rest.

Since Utah has no reactors, this would significantly impact the PFS storage project on the Goshute reservation.

Of course, PFS spokespersons are stating that by doing this Congress if just prolonging the storage of waste since, according to PFS, licensing will take 8-10 years for any facility.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and I’ll be sure to provide any updates here.

Trucks transporting spent fuel rods to the pending Private Fueld Storage (PFS) Site in Utah would take up 2/3 of the road leading to it, making two-way traffic impossible, according to Utah officials quoted in an article published in today’s Deseret News.

The Utah Attorney General’s office spokesperson, Denise Chancellor, briefed the Utah Legislature’s Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee on the issue stating that The route, U-196, is in “sad shape.” Varying from 20 to 22 feet across, often without a shoulder, it is a main thoroughfare to Dugway Proving Ground. It is also an escape route that would be used if an accident happened at the Army’s chemical weapons incinerator, located near Stockton, Tooele County.

The transport trucks would weigh 225 tons and would haul casks of highly radioactive fuel to the PFS site, with much of the weight being the “protective” casing around the rods. The D-News has a diagram and map in today’s article.

Nuke Waste will also be transported by rail through Salt Lake City en route to Tooele County, according to Chancellor. About 697,000 Utahns live within five miles of the route.

You can find out how close you and people around the country for that matter live to a proposed rail line for shipping this waste at Citizen Alert, NukeWasteMap, and NukeWaste states.

In related news, a U.S. House panelOK’d option of private nuclear waste facility.

I wonder how close the people on that panel live to transportation routes?

Private Fuel Storage continues to apply pressure and storm forward:

Using the tactic of promoting money-savings, PFS has asked Congress to provide assistance in its efforts to store nuclear waste in Utah.

Private Fuel Storage has asked Congress to consider allowing the Energy Department to become one of PFS’s clients and move nuclear waste to Utah, or at least reimburse utilities that choose to use the temporary storage site.

The Deseret News Article contains statements from these lawmakers:

The idea surprised Utah’s congressional delegation, which thinks it is a bad idea that most likely won’t go anywhere.

“On more than one occasion, the administration has stressed that PFS is not part of the nation’s nuclear waste policy,” said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.
Continue reading →

Private Fuel Storage, a consoritum of utility companies who now obtain a license to build a nuclear waste storage facility on the Goshute Reservation in Skull Valley in western Utah, has made it clear thatit will move forward and opponents can’t stop them, and in fact is downplaying any efforts being made by citizens in Utah, including the state of Utah.

“We will get the fuel to the site because it’s a legal commodity, and we now have a license to receive it,” said Private Fuel Storage’s chairman John Parkyn.

Really?

And get this:

Parkyn said the Cedar Mountain reserve is not a real wilderness either, arguing that the wilderness is in the mountains and that the delegation just “drew a bubble” around the mountains to block the nuclear waste — an argument he says could matter later down the line.

Not real wilderness? What does that mean? So now the PFS chair is an expert in wilderness issues?

The state of Utah this week filed an updated challenge to the PFS proposal in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. It challenges the NRC’s license, issued to PFS last month.

Jason Groenewold, director of the anti-nuclear group Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, said the $100 million figure is “pennies on the dollar, compared to liabilities the nuclear industry faces for keeping this waste where it’s generated. . . .
“Given that the liabilities and risks are going to be the highest for those that live in Skull Valley, they got the short end of the stick.”

(You can view the Time Magazine article at Utah’s Toxic Opportunity: SOME GOSHUTE INDIANS WANT TO CREATE A NUCLEAR-FUEL DUMP ON THEIR LAND. CONTROVERSIAL? OF COURSE)

The PFS site would be a 40 year project to store up to half the nation’s spent fuel rods from nuclear energy facilities. After 40 years PFS would leave the project and there are no plans to maintain the site after that. Spent fuel/toxic waste takes tens of thousands of years to reach the point being “harmless” to life.

It will be interesting to see if PFS chairman Parkyn gets his way. There is a lot of resistance to this project in our state and their are people who are willing to put their bodies on the line to do everything they can from preventing this project to move forward – including me.

Good resources to reasearch and find more info in this issue are:

HEAL Utah
Shundahai Network

(Dee’s ‘Dotes posts on PFS)