This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Western officials reacted skeptically Friday to a plan to train rural volunteer fire departments along routes where 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel could be shipped to Utah beginning as early as 2007.

Those emergency teams would be the first responders to any rail accident involving the nuclear fuel that a consortium of nuclear power companies wants to ship to the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation and store for as long as 40 years.

Private Fuel Storage chief John Parkyn promised the officials in Portland for a conference on nuclear waste that his consortium of eight nuclear power utilities would come into communities close to the time train shipments are scheduled to come through.

The training would involve "literally calling people together in regions and areas and putting on workshops for them," he said. PFS trainers also would leave copies of training material for them and offer phone numbers for follow-up questions.

But representatives of states affiliated with the Western Governors' Association, including a two-person team from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, expressed doubts about Parkyn's presentation.

"PFS has absolutely no obligation to provide this training," said Connie Nakahara, a DEQ attorney. The state of Utah is the most adamant opponent of the PFS proposed waste storage site.

Because PFS has yet to identify rail routes from the reactors to the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, where PFS plans interim above-ground storage for the spent fuel rods in concrete and steel casks, the affected communities can't do much in the way of advance planning, said Bob Halstead, a consultant for the state of Nevada on matters pertaining to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear repository.

The PFS consortium in 1997 signed a lease with Goshute Tribal Chairman Leon Bear and now is seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a temporary facility on the reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The 20-year license, renewable for another 20 years, could be issued as early as January.

The eight utilities have about 40 nuclear reactors between them. Parkyn said PFS ultimately would transport 4,000 casks of spent fuel to the 100-acre Skull Valley site. He said 200 casks would arrive each year, which would translate to about 40 trainloads. Their ultimate destination would be the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., about 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

The U.S. Department of Energy is working to open the Yucca Mountain site by 2010, a deadline seen as increasingly doubtful due to politics and economics. That has put PFS planning considerably ahead of Yucca Mountain, a cause for worry among officials facing the likelihood that PFS shipments will pass through their states without the level of oversight shipments to Yucca Mountain would receive.

At the end of a two-day meeting of the high-level waste committee of the Western Interstate Energy Board, a subcommittee of the Western Governors' Association, Parkyn sketched PFS plans to build special rail cars to carry the waste casks.

While he didn't draw rail routes for the meeting attendees, Parkyn acknowledged that westbound trains would have to pass through Denver or southern Wyoming, prompting a warning from a Wyoming homeland security official.

"We are a pass-through state and it is a burden to us," said radiological services supervisor Scott Ramsay. "We expect the assistance to come from whoever is putting the burden on us."

Halstead said he appreciated Parkyn's detailed explanation of the custom rail cars PFS plans to build and use for its shipments, but complained that actual routing had been left too open-ended.

"There are parts of your plan that are elegant and beautiful and [the Energy Department] can learn a lot from it," he said. "There are other parts that scare the hell out of me."

Halstead also pointed out the Energy Department has said it wouldn't accept fuel at Yucca Mountain in welded casks, essentially leaving PFS without an exit strategy from Skull Valley unless it's to take the waste back to the utilities that sent it in the first place.

Parkyn said PFS will accept only welded casks in Utah.

"Fuel that's been shipped to Utah in a certified NRC container should be accepted at Yucca Mountain," he said.

The Western Governors' Association has a policy that no radioactive waste facility should be allowed to locate in any state without the express permission of the governor and Legislature. That policy is Utah's law.

Gov. Olene Walker and the Utah Legislature are opposed to high-level nuclear waste in Utah, as is Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr.

A week ago, the state petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal of a lower court decision that overruled state laws blocking the transportation of spent fuel into Utah.