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NUCLEAR WASTE WAY STATION PIQUES COMMUNITY INTEREST
Seven communities across the nation want to study the prospect of hosting
a storage and processing facility for thousands of tons of high-level
nuclear waste from civilian nuclear power plants, the Department of
Energy reported recently.
What makes the option of hosting such sites attractive are DOE grants
up to $100,000 for the studies. So far, two communities have been awarded
grants for Phase I investigations. Of the seven communities, five are
Native American tribes.
The so-called Monitored Retrivable Storage (MRS) facility would be an
above a-ground way station for high-level nuclear waste, such as spent
fuel rods from civilian nuclear power plants. The government would
eventually transfer them to a permanent facitliy, such as the one
currently under investigation at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The Energy Department awarded the first grant in October to the Mescalero
Apache tribe of Mescalero, NM. The second grant went to Grant County, ND.
The deadline for applications has been extended to March 31, 1992.
The Mescalero Apache Indians would use the tribe's 720-square mile reser-
vation in south-central New Mexico. According to DOE, the funds may be
used by the tribe "to gain an understanding of the nation's nuclear waste
management system ... and determine whether [the tribe] has an interest
in pursuing further feasibility studies.
If the awardees decide to go for Phase II of the studies, they may receive
millions of dollars to perform detailed technical studies. However, DOE
says that the feasibility grants "will not be construed as a commitment
by the [awardees] or the states in which they are located to host the
facility."
The other communities applying for the feasibility grants are the Chickasaw
Indian Nation of Oklahoma; Fremont County, WY; the Prairie Island Indian
Community of Minnesota; the Sac and Fox nation of Oklahoma; and the Yakima
nation of Washington state.
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