Storage Plan Approved for Nuclear Waste

"They are a regulator but also a promoter of nuclear energy," she said. "Given that dual role, from this side of the table it looks like there is a bias."

The Skull Valley Goshutes are one of several tribes that the nuclear industry sought out to store the waste. The tribe has only about 130 members, including about 85 adults. Tribal chairman Leon Bear long has been a proponent of the facility, but the tribe is riven by divisions. Bear has traded accusations with other factions, and both he and a leader of a faction opposed to the nuclear facility have been found to have misappropriated tribal funds.

Bear did not return a call yesterday.

But Margene Bullcreek, another member of the tribe, accused Bear and the Bureau of Indian Affairs of exceeding their authority. Although the Private Fuel Storage facility is considered an interim facility, Bullcreek said the continuing problems with the Yucca Mountain facility and the political difficulty of moving nuclear fuel a second time once it gets stored somewhere will make the tribal waste storage plan permanent.

"We believe in the sacredness of our water and our air and our environment," she said in a telephone interview yesterday. "The NRC is blind. They have no heart, no feelings. It doesn't matter if it's a reservation."

Dave Lochbaum, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that advocates for nuclear safety, said the private facility did not make sense.

"If the interim storage site is not at the final repository, it means you are moving the spent fuel twice, which means the cost goes up and the safety goes down," he said. "It sounds unsafe and uneconomical."

But Steve Kerekes, a spokesman at the Nuclear Energy Institute, called such fears "hollow." The country has a long track record of moving nuclear waste safely, he said.

Kerekes said the federal government had failed to honor its word to build a permanent facility, which is why member companies of the nuclear industry umbrella trade group had sought a solution of their own.

Referring to the safety concerns of advocacy groups, he said, "If they are so concerned about that, put pressure on the government to meet its obligation."