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WASHINGTON - Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. urged Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Monday to develop a federal policy that would allow nuclear waste to remain at the reactors that produce it rather than shipping it to a proposed storage facility in Utah's west desert.
Huntsman also said Monday that he will ask Interior Secretary Gale Norton to override the Bureau of Indian Affairs' decision to approve the lease between the utility companies seeking to build the repository and the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, whose reservation would be home to the facility.
"As I told Secretary Bodman, there's no such thing as temporary storage in today's world. If this finds its way to Utah, I'm not sure it would ever leave," the Republican governor said.
He urged the Energy Department to develop a long-term energy storage plan that would allow waste to be stored at reactors for half-a-century.
"Let's let research and development catch up. If we were to buy 30 to 50 years on-site, reprocessing could happen. That's not beyond reality," Huntsman said.
Bodman understood the issue, but did not commit to any action by the department. The Bush administration has budgeted $651 million in the coming year for work on a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and remains committed to that site.
Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both R-Utah, said after a meeting last week with the White House that rapidly getting Yucca Mountain into operation is the best way to prevent interim storage in Utah.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has spent years trying to stop Yucca Mountain, and said last week that he plans to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that would allow the Energy Department to take ownership of waste at the nuclear reactors and store it in casks at the facilities. That could make Yucca Mountain and the Utah west desert site unnecessary.
Huntsman plans to meet with Norton today and said he would likely ask her to use her authority to unilaterally reverse the BIA superintendent's approval of the lease between Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of utility companies, and the Skull Valley Goshutes.
"The Secretary of the Interior does have a tremendous amount of clout in this process," Huntsman said.
As the trustee for Indian tribes around the country, the Bureau of Indian Affairs must approve tribal business deals. The BIA is part of the Interior Department. In 1997, the bureau approved the lease, contingent upon the completion of necessary environmental studies and the granting of a license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commis- sion.
"There's something fundamentally amiss about having 4,000 casks above ground in an era of dirty bombs and truck bombs and commercial aviation [threats]," said Huntsman.
If the facility was targeted by terrorists, "the result would be not just contamination of the Wasatch Front but many places further east," he said.
Huntsman also will meet with Education Secretary Margaret Spellings today and lay out 14 points of concern the state has with the No Child Left Behind school reform law.
The state would like to opt out of some of the federal requirements. Utah already has received a special dispensation from the department regarding teacher qualifications and the Utah Legislature has made clear that it would rather use its own testing regimen rather than the federally mandated testing battery.
"It would be in the interest of the Department of Education to reach a compromise with the State of Utah. There are probably eight to 10 states right behind us with similar circumstances. I've offered Utah to the Education Secretary to" act as a model for a new system blending federal and state standards, Huntsman said.
Huntsman has called a legislative special session for April 20 to give his office, state education leaders and federal officials more time to negotiate flexibility under No Child Left Behind.
The planned special session effectively stalled a bill before the Legislature challenging the sweeping federal law's imposition on state policies and resources.
The governor also said he is optimistic the Energy Department will decide to move 11 million tons of uranium tailings and contaminated soil from the defunct Atlas uranium mill, on the banks of the Colorado River near Moab.
The department is expected to make a decision this spring on whether to move the pile, which continues to contaminate the river, or cover it with an earthen cap. Huntsman, Utah's congressional delegation and governors and members of Congress from other Western states say the pile should be moved.
"I think we'll have a good outcome there," Huntsman said. "My visceral response is I think we're in good shape and that comes from meetings with the top public lands folks in Congress who understand the issue and want to do something about it, and with Secretary Bodman."