The Senate has given final approval to store the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. That means the Bush administration can seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the underground repository.
It also marks a new stage in the process: Send in the lawyers for what portends to be a protracted legal fight.
Meanwhile, nuclear waste continues to accumulate at the nation's nuclear power plants. With Yucca Mountain tied up in litigation for what could be years, the nuclear energy industry is going to be looking for options. Thanks to Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, the Skull Valley Goshute reservation likely will not be one of them.
Hatch and Bennett struck a deal with the Bush administration that should ensure that the proposed Skull Valley repository won't come to fruition. In exchange for their support for Yucca Mountain, the administration agreed to block the use of federal funds collected from utility customers or waste storage to help Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of Midwest utilities that is behind the Skull Valley project. That means the federal government would refuse to help pay for shipping waste to the proposed facility in Tooele County. This move should render it too costly for utilities to proceed on their own.
While some environmentalists and anti-nuke activists are critical of the compromise struck by Hatch and Bennett, consider the dreadful choices they had been presented. Voting against Yucca Mountain would have energized the movement to place a "temporary" nuclear waste repository in Skull Valley.
Waste would be transported through Utah in either event — the permitting of Yucca Mountain or Skull Valley. That issue was really sixes.
By voting for Yucca Mountain, Hatch and Bennett had an opportunity to hold the administration's feet to the fire with respect to the Skull Valley repository. While Hatch and Bennett couldn't halt the project, they have made it very difficult for out-of-state utilities to bankroll the repository and transportation costs on their own.
Still, some accuse Hatch and Bennett of NIMBY politics. How oversimplistic.
This debate has taken many turns in the past 24 years. At first, multiple sites were under consideration. Because of political gamesmanship and other influence, many candidates dropped off the list. In the 1980s, Congress narrowed the possible sites to Yucca Mountain and authorized the Department of Energy Department to study it. After lengthy studies of its geology, the Energy Department concluded it could safely store radioactive materials underground for 10,000 years.
In other words, the political decision that the West would be the likely dumping ground for nuclear waste occurred a long time ago.
If the Skull Valley proposal wasn't in the picture, Hatch and Bennett would have had other considerations. But Skull Valley has been rolling through the regulatory process. As Bennett said, "Given the choice before us, I would rather have the waste go through Utah than to Utah."
In a perfect world, out-of-state utilities that generate electricity using nuclear power would manage their own waste or the approved repositories would, at least, be regionalized. But that's not the reality of 2002. The best Hatch and Bennett could do was to take proactive steps to keep nuclear waste storage out of Utah.
In politics, there's an old saying about the art of compromise that goes "Half a loaf is better than none at all." Instead of ridiculing them, as some have, give Hatch and Bennett credit for a compromise reached under less-than-optimal circumstances.