US tribe sees riches in Utah nuclear waste storage

SKULL VALLEY, Utah, Sep 3 (Reuters) As some US Indian tribes have grown rich in recent years through casinos, others far from population centres have struggled to overcome a historical legacy of poverty.

One tiny tribe in Utah, one of two states that bars gaming, has shocked residents and officials by planning to turn part of their barren reservation into a temporary storage for highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste.

''They gave us crap for land, but they want it back. It's kind of funny to me,'' said Leon Bear, 50, chief of the 18,000-acre Skull Valley Goshute Reservation. ''As long as we are not doing something, the state of Utah is happy.'' RecogniSed Native American tribes have special rights on their sovereign land, but many in Utah say the nuclear plan should be stopped anyway. Even the tribe is bitterly divided.

The arid Goshute reservation lies between two mountain ranges 72 km southwest of Salt Lake City. For decades, the United States engaged in toxic activities nearby, including biological and chemical weapons storage and testing.

''We don't have a resource like oil or gas or coal,'' Bear said.

''We feel that we're being prejudiced against as far as gaming.'' The Skull Valley tribe has just 123 enrolled members. Fewer than 30 live on the reservation, mostly in prefabricated houses along a side road. They boast a single gas station/store.

Only in the late 1970s did Goshute get running water and electricity. The funding came from allowing Hercules Aerospace to test rocket engines in a programme that ended long ago.

Bear now hopes to usher in a new era of unprecedented tribal prosperity with spent fuel storage. He also recently opened a commercial dump for construction and household waste that accepts 4,000 tonnes a day.

MILLIONS AT STAKE The tribe's dollar stake in nuclear fuel storage is not public.

''Millions, I wouldn't say tens of millions -- maybe over time,'' Bear said. ''We do get an annual fee -- it's more tuned to profit.'' In other words, the more concrete and steel storage casks the 3.1 billion dollars project brings in, the more the tribe earns.

Behind the plan is Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of eight electric utilities including Xcel Energy, American Electric Power Co, Edison International and Entergy Corp.

They foresee temporary storage lasting 40 years for up to 44,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel rods. With the nation's long-term nuclear dump beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada still highly uncertain, Bear sees his storage plans possibly lasting even longer.

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