More Nuke News

DOE Wants Moab Tailings Moved

By John Yewell, 4-07-05

State politicians and Moab residents cheered yesterday when Energy Secretary Sam Boden announced that his department would recommend as its "preferred alternative" that the Atlas Mine tailings, next to the Colorado River between Moab and Arches National Park, be moved.

The $395 million project will take eight years, and must still be funded and receive final administrative approval, but those seemed like forgone conclusions yesterday amid the orgy of backslapping.

The pile will be moved to Crescent Junction, near the interchange of I-70 and U.S. 191, about 30 miles north of Moab.

In other nuke developments, Utah was back in front of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Wednesday arguing that a permit be denied for the storage of nuclear waste at the Skull Valley Indian reservation.

Meanwhile, Envirocare, that most misnamed of companies, is back at the Utah Capitol arguing for the doubling in size of its current low-level nuclear waste storage site In Tooele, west of Salt Lake City. State officials cast doubt on the permit being granted.

And finally, it didn’t take long for Gov. Huntsman’s new Public Lands Policy Coordinator and San Juan County Commissioner Lynn Stevens to try to cash in on his office. Stevens and the other commissioners are trying to bring back a proposal to store nuclear waste in their county. But Huntsman’s chief of staff, Jason Chaffetz, dumped a bucket of ice water on the idea: "There is no gray area for us. This is black and white. Absolutely, positively there is no way the governor is interested in storing nuclear waste anywhere in Utah."

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