Private Fuel Storage LLC (PFS) was a nuclear power industry consortium organized to manage spent nuclear fuel based in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The plan was to store it above-ground in dry casks on the Goshute's Skull Valley Indian Reservation, Tooele County, Utah. It was withdrawn in 2012.
Project history
DOE ownership
The Department of Energy took responsibility for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA). A temporary Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) program was expected to be used alongside a geological storage (permanent) program. Eventually the latter focused on Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, and MRS was evaluated on many different sites. Department of Energy (DOE) was told to take title to the SNF no later than 1998. By 1987 DOE planned to build the facility near Oak Ridge, Tennessee on federal land as government nuclear research projects meant skilled personnel and infrastructure were already in place. Opposition to the Oak Ridge location led to its prohibition in a 1987 amendment to the NWPA.
Nuclear Waste Negotiator
This 1987 amendment also created the Office of the United States Nuclear Waste Negotiator (ONWN), which was active in the early 1990s after its first negotiator, David Leroy, was appointed in 1991. Leroy described the government as "seek[ing] volunteers" of counties and tribes willing to host a MRS. After rounds of grants and applications to the counties and tribes, the willing sites was reduced to Indian reservations that had the tribal sovereignty to host spent fuel, as counties were described by Leroy as having "angry mobs" opposed to it. This was considered "particularly reprehensible from an ethical standpoint because of the long and often destructive history of Indian involvement in U.S. nuclear programs." By March 1993 only four tribes remained interested in the project, and by August 1993 two were in negotiations: the Mescalero tribe's Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation in New Mexico and the Goshute tribe's Skull Valley Indian Reservation in Utah. The ONWN was defunded in late 1993 and expired in 1995.
The Skull Valley band applied for grants created by the 1987 program and by 1990. The first round of grants, approximately $100,000, funded the band executive committee's travel to Sacramento, California's Rancho Seco nuclear plant, Washington state's Hanford Site, Florida Power & Light nuclear facilities, and Virginia's Surry Nuclear Power Plant. The second phase of grants, approximately $200,000, sent the committee to Japan's Fugen nuclear plant and Tōkai reprocessing facility, France's La Hague reprocessing facility, UK's Sellafield power/reprocessing/storage facility, and Sweden's Clab storage facility.
Private Fuel Storage, LLC creation
After ONWN wound down, MRS efforts were picked up by a private consortium, Private Fuel Storage, LLC, led by Xcel Energy (via Northern States Power Company's Jim Howard and the "locally visible and vocal" engineer, Scott Northard) to store on of Mescalero land in New Mexico, called the Mescalero Utility Fuel Storage Initiative. This was controversial and opposed by many in the tribe as well as New Mexico's senators Jeff Bingaman and Pete V. Domenici. The Mescalero tribe voted against the $250 million deal in 1995, then proceeded into a second referendum and accusations of coercion and outside involvement, though the vote supposedly ended in PFS's favor, leading Tom Udall (then the New Mexico Attorney General) to state "It appears to me that the tribal leadership has strong-armed members to get this result", with allegations of job losses to opponents, intimidation through killing horses and dogs of a tribe member, and assaulting children. The agreement had a minority of tribal members on its board (4 from the tribe, 5 from PFS), and there was a possibility for the transfer the SNF title to the tribe. The tribe broke off negotiations in 1996.
Negotiations with the Goshute tribe were ongoing and became primary. Xcel/Northern claimed 33 companies were involved, but by 1995 there were only 10 companies, and when Private Fuel Storage was organized in 1996 the number was reduced to eight, being Xcel/Northern, Southern Nuclear, Genoa FuelTech, Southern California Edison, Entergy (via ConEd), American Electric Power (via Indiana-Michigan Power), Florida Power and Light, and FirstEnergy. Boston Edison withdrew in 1997 after citizen objections, and Illinois Power sold its share to Florida Power in 2000. Wisconsin Electric and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) also withdrew. General Public Utilities had merged with Xcel Energy.