Jun 28 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Robert Gehrke The Salt Lake Tribune

A Senate panel dealt a blow to Private Fuel Storage's plan to build temporary nuclear storage in Utah on Tuesday, voting in favor of short-term storage, but specifically prohibiting storage at the PFS facility.

The Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee included $10 million for the temporary storage facilities, but requires them to be federally run and located in states that have nuclear reactors.

The spent nuclear fuel would be kept there until a technology can be developed to extract the reusable parts of the fuel and dispose of the rest.

"Today's vote is good news for Utah. It eliminates the need for the PFS facility in Utah and endorses reprocessing efforts, which I have long supported," Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, a member of the committee, said in a statement. "I believe the proposal supported unanimously today makes great strides in our efforts to find a long-term solution to the nation's nuclear waste challenge."

The language adopted by the subcommittee gives the Energy Secretary the authority to consult with each state's governor to consolidate nuclear fuel in a federally owned site in the state. But it specifically prohibits storing the waste in any state where a commercial, dry cask storage facility has been licensed.

Utah does not have a nuclear power reactor and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a license for PFS to operate a storage site on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The provision also prohibits temporary storage in Nevada.

PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said the company has not had time to study the language carefully.

"It's encouraging that members of Congress are still wrestling with this whole spent fuel storage dilemma, and they are trying to come up with solutions," she said.

"The thing is that when they put such stipulations on funding, they are automatically pushing the solution out eight or 10 years because any other facility is going to take that long to get licensed."