Utah's Toxic Opportunity

By Margot Roosevelt/ Skull Valley

An hour south of the Great Salt Lake, a two-lane blacktop crosses a cattle guard into a wild expanse of golden scrub grass. A few trailers and prefab houses, a collection of junked cars and a gas station that sells Spam and soda pop--such is the homeland of the Native American tribe known as the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes. At their peak, the Goshutes numbered 20,000. Today only a dozen of the band's 121 members live on the 18,000-acre reservation; the rest have scattered across the West in search of a better life.

The land they left behind is scarred by the detritus of war and industry. To the southwest lies the Dugway Proving Ground, where the U.S. government develops chemical and biological weapons. To the east is one of the world's largest nerve-gas incinerators. To the north is a giant magnesium plant, a major polluter. To the northwest sit a hazardous-waste incinerator and a toxic-waste landfill. The tribe's only profitable business is a municipal garbage dump serving Salt Lake City.

Now this beleaguered outpost finds itself caught up in an escalating battle over the future of atomic power in the U.S. Last month the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a license for a $3.1 billion project that would make the Skull Valley reservation the nation's biggest nuclear-waste holding site, a temporary parking lot for 44,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel now being stored at nuclear power plants nationwide. For utilities, it could solve what has been a vexing problem. For tribal officials, the advantages are tangible: as much as $100 million in fees to be paid over 40 years by a Wisconsin-based consortium of utilities, Private Fuel Storage (PFS). The band hopes to use the money to finance a health clinic, a police force and new businesses that could lure scattered tribal members back home. "People say this will destroy the land," says tribal chairman Leon Bear, who brokered the deal. "But how can you poison what is already poisoned?"

The plan has sparked widespread resistance, with opponents ranging from a few tribal holdouts to the Governor of Utah. The state has filed suit in federal court to void the NRC license on the grounds that the spent fuel would sit dangerously close to an Air Force training path. F-16 fighter jets roar overhead on 7,000 sorties a year. Should one crash into the steel-and-concrete casks, state attorneys argue, cancer-causing radiation could waft over Salt Lake City. Moreover, the state says, used fuel rods, parked aboveground, would be a target for car bombers or airplane hijackers--"a terrorist's dream come true," says Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., adding, "I'd lie prostrate on the train tracks to keep this out of our state."

That may be a useless gesture. The Goshute band, like all other federally recognized tribes, is a sovereign nation under the law, and the State of Utah can't tell it what to do. Still, other hurdles remain. Last December Congress designated 100,000 acres west of the reservation as a wilderness area--a ploy by the Utah delegation to block a 32-mile rail spur to the site. Now opponents want the federal Bureau of Land Management to deny a permit for a truck-transfer station. In Congress, a bill sponsored by Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada would undercut the project by forcing utilities in 31 states to keep spent fuel on their property rather than ship it out. Nevada has long fought a federal plan to permanently store atomic waste in a $60 billion underground repository at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas.

Underlying the uproar is a question that has haunted the nation since the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island: Does the U.S. want nuclear energy or not? The issue has new urgency today because electricity demand is expected to grow 45% over the next two decades and pressure is on for the country to do something about global warming. (Unlike generators fueled by coal, gas or oil, atomic reactors emit no greenhouse gases.) President George W. Bush has vowed to start building nuclear plants by the end of this decade, and last August he signed into law a multibillion-dollar package of nuclear incentives. This month Congress will launch hearings on the future of atomic energy. And a debate is expected over an Administration proposal to spend $250 million for research on reprocessing irradiated fuel--an effort abandoned three decades ago out of fear that it would encourage weapons proliferation.

Before the ground breaks on any new commercial reactors, all sides agree, the U.S. must decide what to do with the nuclear waste created by existing plants. Over the past half-century, those plants have accumulated 67,000 tons of spent fuel and radioactive waste that will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years. But ever since the government focused on Yucca Mountain, the project has been stymied by fears of groundwater contamination and confusion over technical design. In the past two decades, the U.S. has spent $6 billion on studies, without making a final decision. Congress will probably grapple this spring with legislation to fast-track Yucca. But even if all the lawsuits were settled today, it couldn't be built before 2015 at the earliest.

Given that delay, the NRC approved Skull Valley as a 40-year stopgap. The toxic rods would be parked in this remote corner of Utah until they could be moved to permanent storage at Yucca. Still, opponents fear that the Goshute site won't be temporary: enough waste will be generated to fill both facilities by 2046. Today spent fuel is stored in the cooling ponds of nuclear power plants around the country, but those ponds are rapidly filling up. Thirty-three plants have transferred their radioactive rods into aboveground casks-- a practice that makes nearby communities nervous. Now space for those dry-ground casks is running out too, utilities say. In the meantime, owners of 10 decommissioned reactors from Connecticut to California are looking for a place to unload their waste so that valuable land, most of it near rivers and cities, can be freed for more profitable uses. "Hazardous materials--plutonium and uranium--should not be scattered around the country," says John Parkyn, chairman of utility consortium PFS. "If the Goshutes will take it, why would we object?"

But not all Goshutes are enthralled with the idea. In a tiny trailer, Steven Vigil, 17, dressed in a T shirt and baggy jeans, is frying frozen burritos on a winter day. "What little we got left is being taken away," he says. His uncle Sammy Blackbear, a 41-year-old laborer, foresees the worst. "What happens if thousands of casks leak into our water and cancer rates go through the roof?" he asks. "Then they'll say, 'You people have to move.'" Calling the project "environmental racism," dissident Goshutes have filed suit to stop it. "We may be surrounded by hazardous waste," says opponent Margene Bullcreek, 59. "But this big corporation is bribing a small, weak tribe."

In fact, the recruitment of Native Americans to store radioactive refuse began as a government initiative in the early 1990s. The Goshutes and a dozen other tribes received federal grants of $100,000 each to study atomic-waste management. The other tribes dropped out of the program, but Goshute officials, including chairman Bear, visited facilities in Japan, France, Britain and Sweden and were convinced of the benefits. "It was an eye opener," Bear says. "Nuclear scientists and physicists told us this is a safe thing to do."

No one knows whether most Goshutes agree, since a referendum has yet to be held. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and intimidation have split the tribe. Bear says a majority of the band signed a 1996 agreement to lease the land, but opponents contend that many had no idea what they were signing. Bear's chairmanship was supposed to expire in 2004, but he has canceled four scheduled elections, saying quorums had not assembled in time. And last April, facing federal embezzlement charges, Bear agreed to return $31,542 he had taken from the tribe's accounts and pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion. Sentenced to three years' probation, he was ordered to pay $13,101 in back taxes. "It's political," he says. "They want to get rid of me."

That local skirmish, however, is dwarfed by national issues. Under pressure from Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, four of the original eight utilities in the consortium recently halted further investment in the project. PFS's Parkyn expects other utilities, particularly those with decommissioned plants, to step in as the project comes online in phases. "It is cheaper to ship to Utah than to build a dry storage site," he says. "And how can you guard spent fuel forever after a plant shuts down?" He expects the 31 other states with nuclear fuel stored at home to support both Yucca and PFS projects.

On the reservation, two women confront each other across a weed-choked yard. Bullcreek's run-down house is surrounded by old tires and broken furniture. "It would be nice to live comfortably," she says. "But we want to maintain our heritage--not be a dumping ground for the domineering society." In contrast, Lori Skiby, 44, the Goshutes' vice chairwoman, has built a $100,000 house thanks to utility-funded tribal loans. "Traditional values don't put a roof over your head," she counters. Both say they want the same thing: for their children and grandchildren to live a good, safe life on the reservation. How to accomplish that is a dilemma of the nuclear age.