The two Atomic Safety Licensing Board rulings - on separate appeals from the state and Private Fuel Storage (PFS) - cleared the way for the NRC to approve a license for the consortium to build and operate the facility 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The ruling is a significant setback in the state's efforts to stop construction of the facility.

In an unusual split decision, the licensing board voted 2-1 to set aside its own earlier decision that the possibility of an F-16 fighter jet crashing into the spent nuclear fuel facility posed unacceptable risk of releasing radiation.

The PFS appeal of that decision argued that even if a jet did crash into the open-air array of 4,000 172-ton waste storage casks, the casks' durability meant the chance of radioactive release would not exceed federal risk standards. Two of the three panel judges agreed. The dissenting judge argued that the number of F-16 crashes analyzed was insufficient to reach that conclusion.

The licensing board also dismissed a state argument that the waste stored temporarily in Utah in welded casks at the PFS facility would not be accepted for transfer to a federal nuclear repository. The state made that argument after an Energy Department official in October told state officials and The Salt Lake Tribune the casks wouldn't pass muster because they wouldn't be packaged according to federal contract requirements.

That ruling, too, was unusual. Despite ruling against the state, the licensing board said the issue "was too important to be ignored," and advised the nuclear regulatory commissioners to address it in "some other manner."

The rulings were the last of 125 "contentions" the licensing board heard in the nearly eight years since Private Fuel Storage signed a lease with Goshute representatives to build 500 concrete pads on 100 acres of desert in Skull Valley.

John Parkyn, who heads the consortium of eight electric utilities backing PFS, hailed the decisions as "a great advancement for the nuclear industry in America."

The $3.1 billion project complements the proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., "and will provide an important alternative to the need to continue addressing storage for spent fuel at 72 separate locations across the United States," Parkyn said.

Parkyn has said PFS could begin accepting shipments of spent fuel rods by 2007.

The Yucca project, however, is in trouble. The Energy Department has pushed back its expected date to file a license application to the end of this year. Meanwhile, scientific and political problems for the repository continue to multiply. Originally scheduled to open in 1998, Yucca now probably won't open until 2015, if ever.

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett said he has a letter from each of the utilities in the PFS consortium promising not to move forward with the Skull Valley facility as long as Yucca Mountain remains on track.

The licensing board decisions are "not happy news," Bennett said, "but it's also not an immediate and final statement that says, 'This stuff is going to start shipping the day after tomorrow.' "

Nuclear power utilities increasingly are building dry cask spent nuclear fuel storage facilities of their own, on or near reactors, because of the growing doubt about Yucca Mountain's viability. That could make PFS less attractive financially.

Private Fuel Storage also faces significant legal and logistical hurdles. The governance of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes is in dispute, as is the legality of the lease PFS signed with the tribe in 1997. Leon Bear, who continues to act as chairman despite challenges from tribal members, will go to trial in April on charges he stole tribal money and cheated on his federal income tax. And dissident Goshutes have said they would mount a federal court challenge if the NRC issues a license to Private Fuel Storage.

But Bear on Thursday was optimistic.

"We got some good news. Good news for us; I don't know if it's good news for the state. We're very pleased about the rulings on those contentions," he said.

Bear said he expected the construction of the facility to take two years, and acknowledged tribal unrest over the PFS plan.

"There's opposition, of course. I think they are going to continue to be opposed to the project," he said. "But they are a minority in the group. As long as the majority continues to be part of the project, I think that's the whole ball of wax."

But Margene Bullcreek, who has led the dissident charge, said the NRC was wrong to assume Bear is a legitimate leader.

"Mr. Bear is saying he's in when he's not really in. How can the NRC pass this on?" she said. "We've never seen the contracts, and we're not going to see them. It's unnerving; it's not the way we do things with our tribal leadership."

If the NRC issues the license, which is likely, the PFS plan must still get final approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM approval is complicated by a moratorium on wilderness studies on the Utah Test and Training Range, the nation's largest overland military training range, which sits next to the proposed waste site. The moratorium prevents the BLM from approving necessary rights of way for a proposed transfer station adjacent to the Union Pacific rail line or the 32-mile track that would connect the transfer station to the Private Fuel Storage site.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, whose district includes the training range and the Goshute reservation, has sponsored legislation that would establish a wilderness area near the reservation. The proposal would have allowed fighter jet overflights but blocked rail shipments of waste to the Goshute facility. The bill failed in December, but Bishop says he will push it again during this session of Congress.

Sen. Orrin Hatch said that while he "strongly disagreed" with the board's rulings, he expected them. "There seems to be a bias within the NRC in favor of the nuclear industry on this issue," he said.

Second District Rep. Jim Matheson called the rulings "a bitter disappointment," and promised to explore every avenue possible to halt the storage of spent nuclear fuel in Utah.

Anti-nuclear environmental activists expressed outrage at Thursday's rulings.

"The idea that shipping tens of thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste to Utah for a pit stop before transporting it further to a hypothetical permanent repository will improve the safety and security of the waste is ludicrous," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's energy program.

Jason Groenewold, director of Healthy Environment Alliance Utah, called the licensing board's actions "absurd."

"The feds are trying to say with a straight face that we should not worry about what happens if a jet crashes into the nuclear waste storage site, which is like saying don't worry about what happens if Charles Manson moves into your neighborhood," Groenewold said. "We have to redouble our opposition or we'll get bowled over."

Utah Assistant Attorney General Denise Chancellor said the state wouldn't receive until today the full text of the jet-crash ruling, which will include information kept out of the publicly released version because of national security concerns. But she vowed the state would not give up its fight to block the facility. "We will certainly exercise all our available legal remedies," she said.

"We've got some very, very good lawyers on this," added Mike Lee, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s general counsel.

The state can appeal the licensing board's rulings to the the board itself or to the NRC's five-man commission, or can take an appeal either to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals or the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court.

The state has an appeal currently before the U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to overturn a lower court decision that Utah had no right to pass laws aimed at stopping Private Fuel Storage.

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Reporter Robert Gehrke contributed to this report.

Atomic Safety Licensing Board conclusions:

* Issue: The state argued that the casks used to ship spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors to Utah were inadequate for later transfer to a permanent disposal site.

Ruling: The licensing board said the state lacked sufficient evidence.

* Issue: Private Fuel Storage appealed an earlier decision, arguing that the chance a fighter jet might crash into the waste casks and release radioactivity wasn't a large enough risk to halt construction.

Ruling: The board agreed.

What's next?

* The state can appeal the decisions to the licensing board and to the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

* If those appeals fail, the state can go to a federal appellate court and eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court.

PFS also faces more roadblocks:

* The Bureau of Indian Affairs must give final approval to the lease agreement with the Goshutes, a step complicated by tribal governance challenges and questions about the legality of the 1997 lease. Leon Bear, who claims to be tribal chairman, refused to hold an election in November, the conclusion of a 4-year term that also has been contested. Bear is scheduled to go to trial in April on federal charges he stole tribal money and cheated on his income taxes.

* The Bureau of Land Management must approve rights-of-way for a transfer facility next to the Union Pacific rail line and for a proposed 32-mile rail spur that PFS would build to the Skull Valley facility. But the BLM can't sign off because Congress placed a moratorium on changes to its land-use management plan that shows no signs of being lifted.

* And, PFS can't proceed until it has adequate service contracts with utilities wishing to use its proposed facility, a process made difficult by the federal agency obstacles.