In a letter to Pam Schuller of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Salt Lake Field Office, the House members - Rob Bishop, Chris Cannon and Jim Matheson - encouraged the bureau to deny Private Fuel Storage's applications for right-of-way across public lands and for access to public lands for the construction of a train-to-truck transfer facility.

"BLM must not act in a way which facilitates the shipment or storage of [spent nuclear fuel] to and in Utah's West Desert," they write. "It is imperative that BLM safeguard the public's trust on this matter. A violation of this trust could have long-standing negative consequences for BLM in the State of Utah."

The lawmakers highlighted the dissenting opinion of Peter Lam, an admistrative judge on the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel. Lam had argued against the board's determination that the risk of an F-16 crash was so remote - less than one in 1 million per year - that it should not prevent the licensing.

PFS, a consortium of utility companies with nuclear plants, have received a license to build the Skull Valley site from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The site would be a kind of parking lot on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation big enough to hold nearly all the reactor waste ever produced by the nation's 103 nuclear power plants.

PFS needs approval from the bureau for a right of way to build a transfer station on the north side of I-80. Another pending request, for a 32-mile rail spur, was PFS's first option but appears to be dead because of wilderness legislation Congress passed last year.

PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said Friday night that she had not seen the legislators remarks and was unable to comment on them.

Utah's senators, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and more than 100 local and national conservation and social justice organizations also have sent letters to the bureau during the ongoing public comment period, voicing their opposition.

The BLM can't consider whether to OK the applications until the Bureau of Indian Affairs grants its final approval of the agreement between the Goshutes and PFS.

jhill@sltrib.com