by Mordecai Specktor
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in a
unanimous vote on June 26 agreed to let Northern States
Power Co. (NSP) build a dry cask storage facility for
nuclear waste on land near the Prairie Island Mdewakanton
Sioux Indian Community.
The PUC decided that NSP could create a nuclear waste dump
comprised of 17 massive steel containers, which would hold
spent nuclear fuel rods from their two reactors at Prairie
Island.
The request by NSP for a Certificate of Need from the PUC to
build the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation, as
it's called, was opposed by the Indian community at Prairie
Island and a coalition of environmental and religious
groups.
The Prairie Island Mdewakanton tribal council intends to
appeal the PUC decision to a state appellate court,
according to Willie Hardacker, an attorney representing the
tribe.
Rather than granting NSP permission to erect 48 storage
casks for radioactive spent fuel, the five PUC commissioners
decided that allowing construction of 17 casks would allow
NSP to operate its Prairie Island reactors until about 2001
to 2005. The Minnesota Public Service Commission, which is
charged with being the watchdog over public utilities, had
intervened in the PUC process, asking that NSP's request be
whittled down to 14 casks.
The PUC seemed to assume that there will be progress in
federal plans to develop a permanent nuclear waste storage
program. Currently, a permanent waste dump for spent fuel
from commercial nuclear reactors is being developed at Yucca
Mountain, Nevada. That site is supposed to go on-line in
2010, but there have been a host of technical and political
problems attending the project.
There are also federal plans to create a MRS (Monitored
Retrievable Storage) facility -- a gigantic warehouse to
store and repackage spent nuclear fuel rods -- somewhere in
the U.S. Five Indian reservations, including the Prairie
Island Mdewakanton Sioux, have expressed interest in hosting
an MRS on their land.
The decision by the PUC went against the recommendation of
Allan W. Klein, an administrative law judge who presided
over hearings on the NSP request, that any decision about
granting permission to construct a nuclear waste dump be
decided by the state legislature.
On April 10, Judge Klein recommended that NSP's request be
denied because the project falls under the state's 1977
Radioactive Waste Management Act and requires legislative
approval.
Without legislative approval, Klein declared, NSP would have
to show that the "spent fuel proposed to be stored in the
dry casks will be removed from the state within a reasonable
period of time." The key to this argument is NSP's
contention that the dry cask storage facility is
"temporary"; however, nobody really knows when the federal
government will be able to round up spent nuclear fuel from
the nation's 110 reactors.
Judge Klein wrote that it was likely that the radioactive
casks would remain at Prairie Island for more than 25 years
and "may never leave Prairie Island."
The PUC commissioners didn't buy that reasoning, and
essentially cast aside the recommendation of the person who
presided over lengthy evidentiary and public hearings in
this matter.
Don Storm, the PUC chair, concluded that the 1977 law was
concerned with nuclear waste coming into Minnesota from
other states. "Minnesota generated waste was not applicable
to what was happening here," Storm declared regarding the
intentions behind passage of the Minnesota Radioactive Waste
Management Act.
On June 26, the PUC meeting room in the American Center
Building in downtown St. Paul was filled with NSP employees,
many of them wearing uniforms from the Prairie Island power
plant. They could be seen doing crossword puzzles, reading
the sports pages and dozing during the lengthy
deliberations. NSP chairman James Howard (1991 annual
salary: $712,192), sat in the front row and watched as the
commissioners meandered on their way toward giving his
company what it wanted.
Following the PUC decision, attorney Willie Hardacker told
the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "It's pretty clear that the
legal and political institutions of Minnesota are failing
the people of this state and the Mdewakanton Sioux. The
system unjustly favors NSP."
George Crocker, a key activist among the environmentalists
opposing the NSP nuclear waste dump, called the PUC decision
an act of "environmental racism" against the Indian
community.
NSP has argued that unless they were granted permission to
store spent nuclear fuel rods outside their power station,
they would have to scale back or shut down the two Prairie
Island reactors, which contribute about 20% of the utilities
total energy generation. James Howard told the Star Tribune
that by the time NSP's 17 casks are full, the federal
government will have established its national permanent
high-level radioactive waste dump.
NSP still requires approval from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission on the design of the storage casks. Attorney
Hardacker indicated that the Prairie Island tribal council
may seek a legal injunction to stop construction of the
nuclear waste dump while their appeal of the PUC decision is
pending.
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Mordecai Specktor
(612) 729-7050
3544 - 16th Ave. So.
Minneapolis, MN 55407