Private Fuel Storage is financially qualified to run a storage site for spent nuclear fuel in Utah's west desert, a federal board ruled Tuesday.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, however, already has ruled the site is too risky because of the possibility of fighter-plane crashes — a finding that could be enough to kill the project.
A final decision has yet to be made by the board's Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"I feel good about the progress we're making, but we fight on," Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt said. "There will not be a single stone unturned in our effort to make certain it doesn't come here."
Private Fuel Storage is a consortium of eight nuclear-powered utilities led by Minnesota's Xcel Energy that are running out of on-site storage for spent fuel rods. The consortium made a 1997 deal with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes to park wastes on the reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
It plans to appeal the board's risk finding by arguing that little radioactivity would be released if a fighter plane crashed into a cask of solid nuclear waste.
If that doesn't work, it plans to apply for a license for 336 steel-and-concrete casks of waste instead of the 4,000 it originally proposed, saying that would reduce the risk of a fighter jet crash.
It will take its case Thursday to a meeting of the licensing board in Rockville, Md.
The U.S. Air Force uses Skull Valley as a flyway to a training and bombing range, but Goshute tribal chairman Leon Bear argues the risk of a jet crash on a 100-acre storage site is infinitesimally small.
He turned the argument by saying the Air Force could pick a more direct flyway to its bombing range and avoid the reservation.
"If these overflights are so dangerous, what about our people?" he said. The Air Force "is using our reservation as a driveway."
The licensing board issued a May 22 ruling saying the storage facility could safely withstand an earthquake — another Pyrrhic victory that left PFS no closer to getting a license.
In addition to the rulings on plane crash and earthquake risks and financial qualifications, the licensing board will deliver a ruling on the environmental risks of a proposed rail spur that would deliver the nuclear waste.
Leavitt, a steadfast opponent of the project, said he hoped that "finally, reasoning is prevailing. There is a place to put this: It's at Yucca Mountain. Congress has made that decision."
PFS was organized by Minnesota's Xcel Energy, which says it's almost out of on-site storage for spent fuel and needs a temporary dump while Nevada's Yucca Mountain is developed.
But Leavitt said Minnesota legislators are on the verge of authorizing more nuclear-waste storage in that state.
Leavitt dismissed PFS' project downsizing as "very clearly a ploy" because "they cannot make it work economically at that level."
The licensing board said it wasn't making public its ruling on the consortium's finances until the group's business partners can submit a redacted version without proprietary information.