Interior had been waiting for Utah's lawsuit challenging the project to wend its way through court, potentially delaying any decision for years. That changed dramatically after Hatch's meeting with Kempthorne, who spent five years in the Senate before serving two terms as Idaho governor.

On Thursday, just 10 weeks after the private session, Interior dealt the waste project two potentially fatal blows. Department officials rejected plans to ship 44,000 tons of radioactive waste to the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, just an hour's drive from Salt Lake City, and vetoed the agreement between Private Fuel Storage, a group of utilities, and the American Indian tribe.

The Interior Department confirmed the meeting took place but wouldn't discuss specifics.

Hatch, in an interview Friday, described it this way: Kempthorne, on the job barely a month, listened patiently and left the June 29 meeting assuring the Utah senator he would get the ball rolling.

"Utah had such a strong case in my eyes, so I did everything I could to make sure the administration understood my position," Hatch said. "I felt pretty confident from the beginning that I could convince anybody this was not the way to go."

Kempthorne, himself, did not make the decisions, although he had been briefed and was well aware of the issues, said Interior Department spokesman Shane Wolfe. The final opinions were delegated to two senior-level assistants.

But Hatch and Sen. Bob Bennett both made clear to Kempthorne their views on the PFS plan in discussions before and after the secretary's confirmation at the end of May.

"I made no attempt to pressure him," Bennett said Friday, "simply to call the issue to his attention and to pay close attention to all the merits because I was convinced that on the merits our point of view would come on top."

For Hatch, sticking close by the Bush administration on nuclear issues was the strategy he had committed to a year before, despite pressure to reverse his course on a permanent nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the nation's 50-year stockpile of spent nuclear fuel.

The rest of Utah's congressional delegation and the governor had come out against building a waste dump at Yucca Mountain, hoping standing with Nevada would help their case against the Skull Valley project. Bennett did a complete turnabout on Yucca during a Senate floor speech, arguing the permanent repository would never be built and a new approach was needed.

Some publicly questioned the wisdom of Hatch's dogged stance at odds with other Utah politicians.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said at the time that Hatch's continued backing of Yucca Mountain was "ill-advised."

"It was one of the most miserable periods of my lifetime," Hatch said Friday. "[But] if I hadn't stuck with the administration, we wouldn't have got this done."

Hatch said he put in countless calls and had many meetings with administration officials, from chief of staff Josh Bolton and his deputy Karl Rove on down.

"This wasn't a case of political pressure. They couldn't ignore me, but we had a strong case. I kept building that case, call by call and meeting by meeting."

Hatch convinced Kempthorne's predecessor, Gale Norton, to reassess the issue of moving waste to the reservation. With a reopened public comment period, thousands of Utahns sent letters urging the transportation plan be rejected.

One of the key factors in Interior's decision against the Skull Valley project was Congress' designation of the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area, which effectively blocks a proposed rail line to the site. Previous attempts to pass the wilderness bill were thwarted with the help of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada. But when Bennett and other Utah leaders joined opponents to Yucca, Reid cleared the way for the Cedar Mountain legislation.

Bennett said that in the end the divergent paths he and Hatch took may have helped reach the goal they both wanted.

"He did what he thought was the right thing to do and I did what I thought was the right thing to do and both the administration's position and Congress' position . . . indicate that it all worked out," he said.