Salt Lake Tribune, Judy Fahys
Published March 11, 2003
Rejecting the idea that storing deadly nuclear waste can be safe while jet fighters loaded with bombs and missiles zip overhead daily, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Monday grounded plans for storing spent nuclear fuel in Skull Valley.
"We find that there is enough likelihood of an F-16 crash into the proposed facility that such an accident must be deemed 'credible,' " the three-member panel of administrative law judges ruled. "The result is the [proposed] facility cannot be licensed without that safety concern being addressed."
The ruling was a long-awaited victory for the state of Utah, which has spent more than $2 million fighting a storage facility proposed for the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation by a consortium of out-of-state utility companies called Private Fuel Storage (PFS).
"What they essentially said is, F-16s and high-level waste just don't mix," said Gov. Mike Leavitt, perhaps the staunchest critic of the Goshute-PFS plan.
The consortium, whose attorneys are only beginning to leaf through the 222-page ruling, had not decided by late Monday whether to fight the ruling or how to do so.
"While we are disappointed with this initial partial decision, we continue to believe that our facility meets the federal regulations," said PFS project manager Scott Northard. "We will review the board's ruling to determine if and how we may address their concerns."
Neither PFS nor the governor would say the ruling stops the $3.1 billion project, pitched as a temporary solution for nuclear waste stored at more than 100 U.S. power plants. There are a number of ways the proposal could still go forward:
* The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could overrule the licensing board decision, as it has on several other points of contention regarding the PFS-Skull Valley project.
* PFS could successfully appeal the ruling.
* PFS could update its license application and prove that, even if a jet fighter did crash into the steel-and-concrete casks holding the waste, the casks would release no dangerous radiation.
The strength of the casks and the likelihood of crashes were central questions examined by the licensing board during nine weeks of hearings last spring and summer.
The PFS-Goshute plan calls for putting up to 4,000 casks -- filled with 10.4 million used nuclear-plant fuel rods -- on a 3-foot slab of soil and concrete that covers about 100 acres of the desert floor. The casks would be above ground and untethered for up to 40 years, and the facility would be big enough to hold nearly all the spent fuel ever produced by the U.S. nuclear power industry.
A few miles away is the biggest missile-and-bomb testing range and the largest pilot-testing region in the nation -- the Utah Test and Training Range. F-16s cross Skull Valley while traveling between the southern range, which is roughly the size of New Jersey, and Hill Air Force Base, where many Air Force pilots come for training.
Project proponents said the storage casks would withstand even earthquakes without tipping over or cracking.
But others have long doubted the wisdom of storing the waste on the important flight path.
During a briefing last year on the prospect of locating a nuclear waste facility next to a test-bombing range, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly said: "Who would be stupid enough to do that?"
Over the summer, Gerald Pease, associate director for ranges and airspace at the Pentagon, gave the military's only official statement on the Skull Valley project. He said in an affidavit to the licensing board that the Pentagon had "no position" but that it would be "unacceptable" to impede work at the training range.
"The Air Force interest is to ensure continued testing and training activities at this vital facility," Pease said. "Therefore, the Air Force opposes any restriction that might result from the siting of the proposed PFS facility."
The state said limits on the range would have an enormous impact on the state, especially the 22,000 jobs and $2.1 billion associated with Hill.
The licensing board, made up of two scientists and a lawyer, took days' worth of testimony to examine why the state insisted licensing the facility was a bad idea and also to hear why PFS and the NRC staff expressed confidence that the risk of an accidental crash was so small it did not need to be studied.
In effect, the ruling came down to a mathematical calculation by the NRC staff that 90 percent of the time a jet fighter pilot could steer a faltering F-16 away from the nuclear waste containers. Without that "pilot avoidance" factor, PFS and the NRC staff could not prove an essential requirement of federal nuclear licensing rules -- that the chance of an accident is less that 1 in 1 million.
Licensing board members pored over detailed reports of nearly five dozen F-16 crashes. They insisted on having F-16 pilots who have crashed -- and survived -- talk about the extreme pressure pilots face as they try to keep control of jets heading into the ground.
Former Hill AFB pilot instructor Hugh Horstman told the board how weather, an F-16's cramped cockpit, the imminent danger and pilot judgment make it hard to say that pilots really could steer a jet away from a catastrophe such as careering into the nation's stockpile of nuclear waste.
Horstman, whose testimony helped make the state's case, showed board members a video that put them next to the pilot during the cockpit chaos of a 1996 crash. Delighted by Monday's ruling, he predicted "an indefinite delay" in the PFS-Goshute license.
"The data does not support their claim," he said.
Other critics of the PFS-Goshute plan joined in applauding the ruling, but all of them remain watchful.
"This is good news for now," said Margene Bullcreek, a Goshute opposed to the storage facility even though the project promises to bring millions of dollars to the impoverished Skull Valley tribe.
U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett called on the five-member NRC to uphold the licensing board's decision.
"Perhaps we can now move forward in an expeditious manner to address this problem," said the Utah Republican. "President Bush has designated and the Congress has approved Yucca Mountain as the most logical location for storage of this waste."
U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, said, "I suspect this battle is not yet over, and it is imperative that we continue to make clear our concerns about so-called temporary and above-ground spent fuel storage in Utah."
