SOURCE: RIVERTON RANGER

DATE: AUGUST 22, 1997

SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL STORAGE IN WYOMING?

Spent nuclear fuel storage in Wyoming?

Riverton-based NEW Corporation wants to get the Owl Creek Project off the ground. Owl Creek is the all-private venture that would store spent nuclear fuel in a 100-acre facility on a 2,700-acre site along a Burlington Northern rail spur several miles northeast of Shoshoni, Wyo. The facility would handle up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. - - Supporters say that substantial changes exist in the latest proposal from the one that met with an overwhelming opposition and a veto from then Governor Mike Sullivan in 1994.

Already, opposition has lined up against the Fremont Count project Governor Jim Geringcr has made no bones about the fact that he is adamantly against the project Geringer told a a Riverton audience recently that he would like to see a different form o f development for Wyoming, "...one that would be on the front end of mineral development, rather than on the back end."

However, Owl Creek Project chairman Robert O. Anderson said, "If there's nothing in the law that says you can't do something, that means you can."

Anderson cited the relative safety of the storage containers. He said they have been tested ruthlessly: they have been loaded onto trains and crashed, first at 60 mph, and then at 80 mph, into a 700-ton concrete wall backed with 1,700 tons of cut; they have been broadsided by a 120-ton locomotive traveling at 80 mph; they have been dropped from a height of 2,000 feet onto hard ground, and they have been burned in a pool of aviation fuel at temperatures of more than 2,000 F; the containers were dented and charred, but did not rupture, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute who completed the tests.