February 23, 2006

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NRC Grants License for Private Nuclear Waste Site
Reuters, US
February 22, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a construction and operating license to Private Fuel Storage LLC for a nuclear waste storage site in Utah, the NRC said on Wednesday.

Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of eight utility companies, still must secure financing and approval from other federal agencies before it can build the spent fuel storage facility in Skull Valley, Utah, about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City on the Goshute Indians reservation.

"The facility is intended for temporary above-ground storage, in large cylindrical casks, of up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from U.S. commercial nuclear power plants," the NRC said a in a press statement. It said it issued the license on Tuesday.

PFS is to be an interim option to store spent nuclear fuel until a permanent site is in place. But plans to open the federal Yucca Mountain project in Nevada are uncertain.

In 2002, Congress approved of the Department of Energy's proposal to store 77,000 tons of used nuclear fuel, currently stored at 126 sites around the nation, at Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

However, Yucca still faces numerous challenges and will take years before it opens, if it ever does.

PFS needs approval of other federal agencies including the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Surface Transportation Board.

PFS has said it would take about two years to build the facility with the earliest in-service date in 2008.

Members of the consortium, who have wavered in their support of the PFS project over the years, have included subsidiaries of Xcel Energy Inc. <XEL.N>, Dairyland Electric Cooperative, American Electric Power Co Inc. <AEP.N>, Edison International <EIX.N>, Southern Co. <SO.N>, FirstEnergy Corp. <FE.N>, Entergy Corp. <ETR.N> and FPL Group Inc. <FPL.N>.

Once the fuel is stored at Skull Valley, it would still be owned by the utilities that used it.