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.
And Time magazine is reporting that PFS would pay the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians up to $100 million over 40 years for the right to operate its proposed repository on the band’s reservation.
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:
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 