Nightmares feared in Utah town

By David Strow / Staff Writer

Homes are constructed along interstate 15 as it snakes into St. George, Utah, on May 2 as trucks and cars travel the popular highway. I-15 is expected to become a main transportaion route for nuclear waste headed to Yucca Mountain repository. Nestled in the city is St. George Mormom Temple, white building in upper right, built between 1871-1877. Photo by Aaron Mayes.

ST. GEORGE, Utah -- When the red ball came drifting over the mountains in the 1950s, young Claudia Peterson thought a flying saucer was coming to visit southwestern Utah.

Adults in the small communities dotting the area knew better. They knew the cloud was fallout, the remains of the latest nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.

It was ominous looking, but onlookers weren't afraid. After all, the federal government said residents had nothing to fear.

It was a lie. And it was one that cost thousands of lives in Southern Utah, for a generation called "downwinders."

The fallout would claim Peterson's father, who died from a brain tumor. It led to skin cancer in her sister, ending her life at 36. Peterson, who said she suffers health problems from her own exposure, blames the radiation for the death of her 6-year-old from leukemia.

Now, Peterson fears the nightmare may begin again.

Should Congress go along with President Bush's recommendation, trucks laden with intensely radioactive nuclear waste will begin snaking their way across the nation's railways and freeways toward Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

Geography makes it inevitable that Utah will be a crossroad for this waste. Trucks traveling west along Interstate 80, transporting waste from the Northeast's reactors, may cruise through Salt Lake City before turning south.

Waste from the Northwest and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory headed for Nevada would likely travel south on Interstate 15 through Utah, through heavily residential areas in towns such as Ogden, Roy, Layton and Bountiful before reaching the junction with I-80 in Salt Lake City.

From there, nuclear waste would head south, passing towns such as Sandy, Orem and Provo. Eventually the waste would pass through fast-growing Cedar City and St. George before entering Arizona and then Nevada.

Nevada officials have estimated as much as 90 percent of the waste bound for Yucca will, at one point, pass through Utah.

Pro-Yucca forces insist there's little to fear. The waste is sealed away in nearly impregnable drums, they say. There's never been an accident involving nuclear material, they point out. Exposure to "background" radiation will be minimal, they insist.

Not surprisingly, skepticism is rife in Southern Utah.

St. George resident Claudia Peterson listens to a question about the possibility of nuclear waste being transported through the Southern Utah town. Photo by Aaron Mayes.

"When they tell us it's safe, we don't believe it," Peterson said. "They've lied to us so many times before. They've killed us. And they want to keep putting us at risk."

"We were all told during nuclear testing that nothing wrong was happening, not to worry about it," said David Rachlis, who owns a tour-operation company in nearby Springdale. "There is a healthy skepticism when they tell us there are no problems with anything, particularly with radiation and nuclear materials. We've been lied to, and we're casting a wary eye to the people proposing this."

But the Yucca Mountain issue, so far, is a subject relegated to the passionate activists, those that have felt pain from nuclear issues in the past. For many others, it is an issue that just hasn't been a priority.

"I can't say it's on anybody's radar screen here," said Jason Griffith, a commercial real estate agent with NAI Utah Commercial in St. George. "I think there's a higher probability of another Three Mile Island than one of these containers tipping over."

Then Griffith glances at maps showing the transportation routes of the waste, the potential accident scenarios published by Nevada officials. "Scenario 3" is of particular interest -- a gasoline truck slamming into a truck of nuclear waste, creating a raging fire that sprays radiation over a city.

Then there are the numbers -- 95,947 truck shipments over the next 39 years, an average of just under seven per day.

He grows quiet, a look of concern starting to cross his face.

"It doesn't thrill me," Griffith finally says. "I live 1,000 feet from the freeway."

A tractor-trailer is driven through Arizona's Virgin River Gorge on Intertstate 15 heading from St. George, Utah, to Las Vegas. I-15 is expected to become a main transportation route for nuclear waste headed to a Yucca Mountain Repository. Photo by Aaron Mayes.

Much of St. George faces a similar situation. In its descent from Salt Lake City toward Las Vegas, I-15 cuts through the eastern half of this rural community of 50,000.

Vardell Curtis, executive vice president of the Washington County Board of Realtors, estimates about 20 percent of the 50,000 live within a mile of I-15. Soon that number will rise to 25 percent, he estimates.

Driving north along I-15 toward St. George, it isn't difficult to see why. Along each side of the freeway, the high desert terrain is dotted with new homes, and housing developments now under construction.

This has been a rapidly growing community since I-15 arrived in St. George in 1973, with growth rates exceeding 85 percent each decade since the 1980s. Home prices have been rising significantly as a result -- the average selling price for a Washington County home was $154,195 in 2001, up 17 percent from 1997.

If you believe Nevada officials, those home prices could take a massive hit, should Yucca Mountain open in 2010.

Property appraisers in Southern Nevada were asked what would happen to home values near nuclear waste shipment routes. Even if no accident occurred, the appraisers guessed home values would drop 2 percent to 3.5 percent within a mile of the shipment route.

If an accident occurred, but no radiation was released, the negative publicity and fear factors alone would send property values down as much as 8 percent, the appraisers estimated. And in a worst-case scenario -- an accident involving the release of radiation -- home values would plunge 29 percent to 34 percent.

St. George resident and Washington County Board of Realtors Executive Vice President Vardell Curtis gestures while talking about the possibility of nuclear waste being transported through the Siuthern Utah own during an interview. Photo by Aaron Mayes.

That, of course, is the opinion of Clark County appraisers, where opinions against Yucca run high. But the amount of waste coming through St. George will be nearly as high as Clark County. Could the same happen there?

It is possible, Curtis said.

With home prices, "public perception is the reality," Curtis said. "It doesn't have to happen to have an effect."

Those involved with the area's tourism industry don't fear a drop off in tourists coming to visit the area's multitude of national parks. That's despite Nevada studies indicating Yucca could cause visitation to drop in Mesquite, near the Utah and Arizona borders.

"It's certainly not something I'm looking forward to having come through to the west of us," Rachlis said. "But I don't think people are making the connection yet between Southern Utah and Yucca Mountain. I don't know if people traveling from all over the world will decide not to visit here because of it."

Utah would seem a natural ally for Nevada in its battle against Yucca Mountain. The two Western states are neighbors. Neither hosts any nuclear plants. Both will bear significant shipments of waste. Both suffered damage from nuclear testing.

And yet many Utahns are like the businesspeople of St. George, unconcerned about Yucca Mountain. In fact, there is a great deal of support for it in Utah. Both of Utah's senators, Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett, have favored Yucca in the past.

In an April poll, the Deseret News of Salt Lake City asked Utahns whether they believed Yucca Mountain was a good location for the country's nuclear waste. Fifty-two percent favored Yucca, while only 24 percent opposed it.

Yet the poll also showed that Utahns have not made the connection between Yucca Mountain and the transportation of waste through their state. When asked in the same poll about how they felt about waste being transported through their state, 77 percent said they were "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about it.

That gives hope to anti-Yucca forces in Utah, including Steve Erickson, director of the Citizens Education Project in Salt Lake City.

"That (the 77 percent against transportation) is why we think Utah is still in play on the Yucca question," Erickson said.

St. George commercial real estate agent Jason Griffith of NAI Utah Commercial Southern Region talks about the possibility of nuclear waste being transported through the town. Photo by Aaron Mayes.

But Yucca has become inextricably intertwined with another issue in Utah -- a nuclear waste dump proposed for Skull Valley, an Indian reservation 70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The Goshute tribe has a pact with Private Fuel Storage -- a consortium of nuclear power plant operators from across the country -- to use their reservation as a temporary dumping ground for up to 40,000 tons of the nation's nuclear waste.

Not surprisingly, it is an issue that Utahns oppose with the same fervor as Nevadans oppose Yucca Mountain -- the Deseret News poll found 79 percent in opposition to the Goshute dump. In its effort to find allies in the anti-Yucca fight, Nevada has thrown its support behind Utah's battle to keep waste out of Goshute.

Unfortunately for Nevada, the anti-nuclear alliance with Utah has pretty much been a one-way street. Eager to keep waste out by any means necessary, many Utah officials have latched on to one hope -- putting waste near Las Vegas means it won't be kept near Salt Lake City.

Erickson believes that's a horrendous mistake. In his opinion, Yucca Mountain only makes a Goshute dump more likely, not less.

"These are joined at the hip," Erickson said. "If Yucca Mountain is approved, it makes the PFS facility that much more attractive and viable because it will take so long to get all of the current inventory of spent fuel down to Yucca Mountain and into Yucca Mountain.

"It will take 30 to 40 years. That's the length of time they could store it at the Goshute lands under the lease."

Some Utahns believe it could stay even longer than that, regardless of whether Yucca opens or not. A group of Green Party candidates from Utah noted in a Deseret News column that the nation's nuclear industry was likely to generate far more waste than Yucca could handle -- as much as 53,000 tons more by 2040.

"Unless PFS was willing to take back the 40,000 tons stored at Skull Valley at that time, it seems highly unlikely the Skull Valley site is as temporary as its supporters claim," the candidates wrote.

But many Utahns simply have not made that connection, Erickson said. Obsessed with stopping Skull Mountain, they simply don't know or don't care much about Yucca Mountain.

Nevada is attempting to change that. On May 9, the first television ads funded by anti-Yucca forces began airing in Salt Lake City, in an effort to put pressure on Bennett and Hatch. (It may not be wasted money -- a spokeswoman for Hatch said recently that the senator would re-examine the issue with "fresh eyes" before the Senate vote.)

Erickson is vowing his organization will fight alongside the Nevadans for the hearts and minds of Utahns.

"I'm convinced there will be a dramatic shift in public opinion in the next two months," Erickson said. "We have several different campaign tactics in mind, and we're working on them. It's going to make a difference."

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