June 12 , 2006

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Appeals Court Rules in Favor of Nuclear Reactor Foes
By Judy Fahys
Salt Lake Tribune, UT
June 9, 2006

An appeals court ruling in California last week has brought new hope for Utah lawyers fighting proposed nuclear reactor waste storage in Skull Valley.
   

A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday in favor of the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and the Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club, which insisted that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission should analyze the environmental consequences of a terrorist attack on an oceanside nuclear waste storage site on California's Central Coast.
   

Several times the judges mentioned the commission's arguments against undertaking a similar study for the proposed Skull Valley site in Tooele County. Over the objections of the State of Utah and others, that site received a license last year to store up to 44,000 tons of high-level radioactive reactor waste in 4,000 steel and concrete containers.
   

Three times in the agency's eight-year review of Skull Valley the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rebuffed Utah's requests to examine terrorist risks. Basically, the commission said such an attack is too unlikely to be considered a threat.
   

The appeals court judges said it didn't make sense for the agency to say, on the one hand, it takes terrorism seriously, and on the other that it won't allow the question to be discussed as part of the environmental review process.
   

"It appears as though the NRC is attempting, as a matter of policy, to insist on its preparedness and the seriousness with which it is responding to the post-Sept. 11 terrorist threat, while concluding, as a matter of law, that all terrorist threats are remote and highly speculative," wrote Judge Sidney Thomas in the 9th Circuit Court opinion.
   

Assistant Utah Attorney General Denise Chancellor said Wednesday the commission's reasoning in both cases was identical, and she hinted that the Washington, D.C., appeals court judges now considering the state's appeal of the Skull Valley license might have a similar outcome.
   

The Skull Valley project is a joint enterprise of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, which is housing the storage site on its reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, and Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of utility companies.
   

fahys@sltrib.com