Senators outline objections to right of way for nuke site on Goshute land

The Bureau of Land Management has received more than 4,350 mostly negative letters, e-mails, postcards and faxes as it considers whether to grant access across public land to a nuclear waste storage facility about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Tuesday evening, Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett added to the BLM's stack a seven-page letter blasting proposed access routes to the facility, arguing it is unsafe and a potential terrorist target.

"If we are to truly defend the homeland, we must think the unthinkable in order to mitigate the chances of success of a surprise attack," the senators wrote. "It is easy to recall similar situations in which terrorists filled trucks with high explosives and detonated those devices near government installations."

Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of power utilities, has a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to store up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel above ground on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation.

But the BLM has to sign off on its request to build either a rail line or a transfer facility to get to the site.

The BLM is collecting public input on the plans until Monday.

The rail spur is blocked by the newly created Cedar Mountains Wilderness Area, meaning the most likely way to access the site is by building a nine- or 10-acre transfer station, which would allow PFS to move waste onto huge trucks to be taken to the storage site.

Pam Schuller, an environmental specialist with the BLM's Salt Lake Field Office, said she has received input from people across country and in Utah, including city and county officials from the Salt Lake area.

In all, Schuller said, about 100 comments pour into the office each day about PFS's proposal.

She and other officials are looking at each piece of mail for information that was not considered in an initial evaluation of the project, such as significant new facts about health, safety or other issues.

The agency took public comments on the proposal several years ago, but Hatch argued that the facts surrounding PFS's application had changed so much, the government needed to consider new information from the public.

Utah's members of Congress are hopeful that the new comments will help add one more roadblock to the nuclear waste facility.

In their letter, the senators warn the transfer station would endanger the public by blocking a Tooele County evacuation route, allowing nuclear waste to be stored for periods at an insecure transfer facility and by putting dangerous waste in an area where the military tests planes and bombs.

They also worry the transfer station _ about 600 feet from the Interstate 80 frontage road _ could be a terrorist target.