The hearing is taking place behind closed doors in Washington to protect sensitive nuclear safety information from getting into terrorists' hands. But the real action on the nation's nuclear-waste problem continues to play out in plain view in the dynamic between the temporary Skull Valley storage site and the federal repository planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev.

That's where the federal government wants to build underground disposal for up to 77,000 tons of reactor waste and the highly radioactive discards from nuclear bomb-making programs.

The thinking goes that further delays on Yucca Mountain would increase pressure on the federal government to allow the Utah project, a joint venture of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians and a consortium of out-of-state utilities called Private Fuel Storage, or PFS.

And lately, Yucca Mountain has run into a few potential obstacles.

The possible snags affirm what proponents of the Skull Valley site have said all along: The nuclear industry needs an interim alternative to Yucca, which has been under discussion for more than 20 years.

"It points to the need for temporary storage," said PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin. If the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board signs off on the Skull Valley project after this new round of hearings, waste could start coming to Utah by 2007.

Meanwhile, even though the Energy Department has promised to open the Nevada repository by 2010, many doubt the federal government will be able to meet the deadline.

Martin calls the Energy Department's effort to license Yucca Mountain in four years "extremely optimistic." The PFS proposal, though temporary and far less complex than plans for the permanent Yucca repository, recently entered its eighth year of federal licensing review - PFS originally expected it to take a couple of years - and the earliest the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could issue the license is next January.

Bob Loux, head of the Nevada state government office devoted to derailing the Yucca Mountain plan, bluntly doubts that Yucca Mountain can secure a license in half the time.

"I don't think there's any way in the world that the NRC is going to be able to complete this [licensing] hearing process in four years," he said.

Loux has many reasons to believe there will be more delays for Yucca Mountain, including:

l A Washington, D.C., appeals court last month rejected a regulation requiring the Energy Department to build the repository so that it would be safe for 10,000 years, saying that it should stand up even longer. Two past changes to that standard have each delayed the site by eight months, Loux said.

l A funding squeeze looms because the Energy Department wanted $880 million for next year's work on Yucca but the Bush administration budgeted only $131 million.

l The Energy Department has failed to complete an electronic document system that must be done to the NRC's satisfaction at least six months before commissioners will accept a license application for the Yucca Mountain project.

l The nation may have a new president next year in Democrat John Kerry, who restated his opposition to the Nevada repository while stumping last week in Nevada.

As these events unfold around Yucca Mountain, Skull Valley rarely comes up as an alternative, even though PFS continues to advertise storage space in the nuclear industry trade media.

The consortium has always billed itself as a solution to a backlog of reactor waste that is accumulating at more than 60 sites around the nation.

As planned, the facility would be big enough to hold up to 4,000 steel-and-concrete containers of spent fuel - about 10 million rods - on concrete pads sprawling across 100 acres of the Skull Valley Goshute reservation. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi.

Utah political leaders have been the Skull Valley project's most aggressive and vocal critics. But so far they have not succeeded in stopping it.

Lawmakers passed anti-waste legislation in 1998 and 2001, but last month a federal appeals court struck them down.

Republican 1st District Rep. Rob Bishop has sponsored federal legislation that would use wilderness protections to block rail shipments from traversing the eastern edge of the Cedar Mountains. The legislation, first conceived by then-Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, appears to be bogged down in a Senate defense bill.

"It took a great deal of effort by the delegation to get to where we are right now," said Adam Elggren, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, "and I understand that negotiations are in a delicate stage."

Hatch, along with fellow Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett, voted two summers ago to override Nevada's objections to Yucca Mountain and get that project going on the premise that the sooner the Nevada dump is built, the less likely the Skull Valley storage would be needed.

State Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, is not sure what the state will do next. He criticized then-Gov. Mike Leavitt for a "bet-the-farm legal strategy."

"It's now looking like that bet is not very wise," he said. "Where does that leave us?"

He worries that even if the Legislature steps in to deal with Skull Valley soon, it may be too late to have any control over the site because it's on sovereign lands.

Utah may also have missed the chance to negotiate financial benefits for living with the risks it poses.

Still, he said, "I am not pessimistic. I'm not fatalistic."

Ultimately, it could be that Skull Valley never materializes into a viable option because the licensing process falls through or the numbers don't add up for potential customers.

Rod McCullum, who follows waste management for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, wonders how many companies would want storage in Skull Valley, regardless of what happens to Yucca Mountain. He notes that the storage crisis PFS is banking on has instead become more of a financial and legal crisis for the federal government.

Reactor owners have filed 65 suits against the Energy Department for missing its original disposal-site deadline in 1998. They already have won one of those cases.

Meanwhile, many have expanded storage at their reactors to avoid the expense of moving it before the government is ready to haul it away. There is room for more than 500 casks at 28 sites now.

"The companies don't have a crisis," McCullum said. "The government does."

Finally, there is the possibility that the state will succeed in shooting down the license before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. The three-person panel, an expert review board of the NRC, is analyzing arguments that the waste casks will hold up even if a military jet crashes into the site. Skull Valley is on the path of thousands of flights between the Utah Test and Training Range and Hill Air Force Base.

Washington, D.C., attorney Joe Egan warns that a license for PFS is no sure bet. A member of Nevada's legal team that has worked with Utah in trying to derail the PFS project, he said Utah's lawyers have a strong case. Even with political and economic pressure to deal with the waste backlog, the consortium might not be able to prove the casks will withstand the impact of a crash, he said.

"If they can't make the numbers, the licensing board is not going to give them a license," Egan said. "It's not political pressure. It's the regulations."

He added: "Anyone who thinks it's over is deluding themselves. It's not over.

fahys@sltrib.com