"We're very concerned that this provision was inserted into the defense authorization bill," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "We're working with the Senate Armed Services Committee to rectify it."

Private Fuel Storage, a group of electric utilities that produce nuclear power, received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to store 44,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

However, in order to move the waste to the site, PFS needed the Bureau of Land Management to change its land-use restrictions on the federal land surrounding the reservation so it could build a rail line to the reservation.

In 1999, then-Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, added language to a Defense Department bill that would require the Air Force to study how storing nuclear waste on the reservation would affect the military's use of the adjacent Utah Test and Training Range, before the BLM could make the change.

Congress never allocated money for the study and the Air Force never started it. When the Interior Department rejected the PFS lease last September, the unfinished Air Force study was cited as one of the reasons for the decision.

The provision, buried in the Defense Authorization bill that has been approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee, would repeal the required study.

"The Department of Defense has failed, for over six years, to submit this report, and has not given the committee any indication the report will ever be submitted," the Senate committee wrote in its report. "The committee does not believe it is fair for one government agency to restrict the actions of another agency indefinitely simply through inaction. Furthermore, circumstances have changed in the intervening years, and the committee sees no further need for this restriction."

It is not clear who added the measure to the bill.

Sue Martin, a spokeswoman for PFS, said the company did not push for the change, but thinks it is a good idea.

The company plans to appeal the BLM's decision rejecting PFS' proposed rail line. Removing the Hansen language could help that appeal.

Assistant Utah Attorney General Denise Chancellor said the state is aware of the provision and would prefer the Hansen language be left as it is, but points out it was only one piece the BLM cited in rejecting the PFS lease.

In January 2006, President Bush signed a defense bill designating the Cedar Mountain Wilderness area, which essentially blocks rail access to the reservation, providing a much larger obstacle for PFS.

The defense bill still has to be approved by the judiciary and intelligence committees before going to the full Senate for a vote. The House is considering a separate bill that doesn't include the repeal of the Hansen language.