"I want to make sure the White House is able to follow this issue as we proceed," Huntsman said of the state's fight to block a proposed high-level nuclear waste dump on the Skull Valley Reservation of the Goshute Indian tribe.

Meeting with White House officials during a Republican Governors Association dinner Saturday night and in sessions at the National Governors Association winter meeting in the nation's capital, Huntsman said he emphasized the state's opposition to Private Fuel Storage's plan to transport casks of waste from the nation's nuclear energy reactors to Utah's western desert.

But Huntsman has yet to get a firm indication of how far the Bush administration will go in siding with Utah in the nuke dump fight.

"The feedback is they want to follow the issue with us and there's only so much detail you can cover at this point," Huntsman said before attending a private Sunday evening dinner with President Bush and first lady Laura Bush at the White House. "We will have meetings to follow."

At the same time, Huntsman plans on using every option available to get the administration's backing.

"I've heard rumors [Utah first lady] Mary Kaye will be sitting next to the president during dinner," he said. "If so, I might whisper to her to whisper something to the president."

In 2002, the Bush administration signed a written pledge to block use of federal funds to help build, maintain or transport nuclear waste to the Goshute dump in exchange for votes from Utah's two Republican senators, Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, in favor of siting the nation's nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

Without access to money from the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, many industry observers believe the PFS project will not be economically feasible to the consortium of utility companies underwriting the effort.

But the Utah project continues to gain momentum as the Bush administration's preferred nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain faces an uncertain future due to congressional divisions and court rulings.

Last week, a federal safety advisory board forwarded the PFS application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for final approval. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected Utah's claim that chances of an F-16 jet from nearby Hill Air Force Base crashing into the waste dump posed too great a risk for the project to proceed.

PFS has proposed storing waste in Utah from eastern state reactors for up to 40 years, after which time the casks would be transported to Yucca Mountain for permanent storage.