Utah's Toxic Opportunity

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Given that delay, the NRC approved Skull Valley as a 40-year stopgap. The toxic rods would be parked in this remote corner of Utah until they could be moved to permanent storage at Yucca. Still, opponents fear that the Goshute site won't be temporary: enough waste will be generated to fill both facilities by 2046. Today spent fuel is stored in the cooling ponds of nuclear power plants around the country, but those ponds are rapidly filling up. Thirty-three plants have transferred their radioactive rods into aboveground casks-- a practice that makes nearby communities nervous. Now space for those dry-ground casks is running out too, utilities say. In the meantime, owners of 10 decommissioned reactors from Connecticut to California are looking for a place to unload their waste so that valuable land, most of it near rivers and cities, can be freed for more profitable uses. "Hazardous materials--plutonium and uranium--should not be scattered around the country," says John Parkyn, chairman of utility consortium PFS. "If the Goshutes will take it, why would we object?"

But not all Goshutes are enthralled with the idea. In a tiny trailer, Steven Vigil, 17, dressed in a T shirt and baggy jeans, is frying frozen burritos on a winter day. "What little we got left is being taken away," he says. His uncle Sammy Blackbear, a 41-year-old laborer, foresees the worst. "What happens if thousands of casks leak into our water and cancer rates go through the roof?" he asks. "Then they'll say, 'You people have to move.'" Calling the project "environmental racism," dissident Goshutes have filed suit to stop it. "We may be surrounded by hazardous waste," says opponent Margene Bullcreek, 59. "But this big corporation is bribing a small, weak tribe."

In fact, the recruitment of Native Americans to store radioactive refuse began as a government initiative in the early 1990s. The Goshutes and a dozen other tribes received federal grants of $100,000 each to study atomic-waste management. The other tribes dropped out of the program, but Goshute officials, including chairman Bear, visited facilities in Japan, France, Britain and Sweden and were convinced of the benefits. "It was an eye opener," Bear says. "Nuclear scientists and physicists told us this is a safe thing to do."

No one knows whether most Goshutes agree, since a referendum has yet to be held. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and intimidation have split the tribe. Bear says a majority of the band signed a 1996 agreement to lease the land, but opponents contend that many had no idea what they were signing. Bear's chairmanship was supposed to expire in 2004, but he has canceled four scheduled elections, saying quorums had not assembled in time. And last April, facing federal embezzlement charges, Bear agreed to return $31,542 he had taken from the tribe's accounts and pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion. Sentenced to three years' probation, he was ordered to pay $13,101 in back taxes. "It's political," he says. "They want to get rid of me."