This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Four years ago, Utahns thought they had driven a stake through the heart of a scheme to store 44,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear reactor fuel in steel casks on a parking lot in Skull Valley. In July, however, a federal court revived the project, ruling that the Department of the Interior must reconsider its decisions denying a right of way and a lease. Now, Interior has compounded that setback to Utah's interests by declining to appeal the court's decision.

This project is so hostile to the health, safety and economic well-being of Utah that this state must employ every legal means to stop it. That is why we are so disappointed with Interior's decision not to appeal the court's ruling.

Candidly, the judge had ample grounds to send the decisions on the lease and right of way back to Interior for further proceedings. After that added consideration, possibly including a supplement to the environmental report, it is possible that Interior could once again rule against both the lease and the right of way.

Nevertheless, a review by an appeals court was worth the effort, if only to deduce whether other judges would affirm the trial court's ruling that Interior's earlier decisions were "arbitrary and capricious." The trial judge reached that conclusion because Interior officials failed to remedy difficulties in their own environmental impact statement, then cited those problems as reasons to deny the applications.

But Judge David M. Ebel discounted the most important argument against the facility: that it could become permanent if the U.S. government fails to build a long-term repository for high-level nuclear wastes. Utahns are acutely aware that the federal government was supposed to provide that permanent disposal site by 1998, but so far has failed.

The Skull Valley site was conceived as an interim solution to that very dilemma. Private Fuel Storage is a consortium of electric utilities that use nuclear reactors to generate power. They want to move spent fuel rods from those reactor sites to an interim storage facility in Skull Valley on land that they would lease from the Goshute tribe. It is that lease, for 25 years with an option for another 25, that Interior denied. The federal department also denied a right of way for a facility on federal land where shipping casks would be transferred from railroad cars to trucks.

Because the federal government has failed to provide a permanent disposal site, interim storage at Skull Valley could become a permanent blight on Utah, and it would be located near the largest Air Force bombing range in the United States. That's simply nuts.