March 29, 2006

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Feds Cool Over PFS Proposal
By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News, UT
March 16, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Energy Department has an "open mind" when it comes to using a temporary storage site before permanently moving nuclear waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But the proposed Private Fuel Storage facility in Utah may not be what it has in mind, according to a department official.

PFS, which wants to store 40,000 tons of used nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation in Tooele County, sent a letter to Congress asking for it to consider having the Energy Department be its client — or at least reimburse utilities that want to store fuel there — but based on comments made at two House hearings Wednesday, it does not sound like something the Energy Department would want.

"We have never really considered Private Fuel Storage as something consistent with our obligations to take spent fuel under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act," said Clay Sell, deputy energy secretary. "We think the right answer is for the United States government to get in a position to take possession of spent fuel at an appropriate federal geologic repository, because otherwise we are just building up our liabilities for spent-fuel management."

Sell testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday at a hearing specifically looking at the status of the department's Yucca Mountain project in Nevada. The government aims to store 77,000 tons of used nuclear fuel inside the mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Sell said the department has an open mind for other interim storage options but that Congress would need to approve such a change.

The department is overdue in submitting Yucca's license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but Sell said he expects a new schedule for when the license would be done by June or July.

Meanwhile, Rep. Pete Visclosky of Indiana, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, asked the department's top Yucca official to respond in writing on whether PFS's proposal is worth considering and if not, why not.

At a separate hearing on the department's nuclear waste budget, Paul Golan, the acting head of the Yucca Mountain Project, told the subcommittee that he was not familiar with the PFS offer but that the department believes opening Yucca is the best solution.

Visclosky said he just wants to know what the department's position on the idea is but would not say what he thought of it personally.

Subcommittee Chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, said he did not care if interim storage was done privately or by the federal government but that it needs to be considered.

Even if the department does not opt to work with PFS, the company is still shopping around to commercial nuclear utilities that need to have another option to store their used nuclear fuel. PFS Chairman John Parkyn has said that storing waste at PFS, which now has a license approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, would be a cheaper option for those storing waste on site.

E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com