The state is attempting to reopen hearings before the federal Atomic Safety Licensing Board and has asked the board to consider evidence that spent fuel stored at PFS, supposedly only temporarily, wouldn't be accepted at the planned Yucca Mountain waste repository.
But PFS lawyer Jay Silberg said this week the state has failed to make its case.
"Yucca Mountain is designed to take exactly the kind of fuel the state alleges it won't take," he said.
The state in a "late contention" filed last month focused on an Energy Department official's disclosure that the type of welded canisters PFS would use to store the spent fuel wouldn't meet contract requirements for storage at Yucca Mountain, the site in Nevada proposed to hold the nation's spent nuclear fuel.
The state argued the disclosure meant environmental analyses for the PFS facility would have to be redone. The state also claimed the dispute in effect threatened to turn PFS into a permanent instead of temporary facility.
The state has until next Friday to respond to PFS. After that, the licensing board will consider whether to allow oral arguments.
PFS could get its 20-year license as early as January and could begin accepting shipments of spent fuel rods by 2007. The facility plans to take 44,000 tons of nuclear waste in 4,000 concrete and steel canisters that would sit for up to 40 years on open-air concrete pads covering about 100 acres 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
The state's complaint to the licensing board included concerns about whether PFS, a limited liability consortium of eight utilities, would have sufficient operating revenue or commitments from its customers to pay to repack or reship the waste.
Silberg said all the issues raised in the state's latest contention previously have been aired.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted a 40-year license allowing a nuclear utility to keep spent fuel in dry cask storage on site. The license granted to the Surry nuclear plant in Virginia was the first of its kind.
The NRC maintains that such facilities can safely store waste for at least 100 years.
