If John Parkyn was trying to convince Utahns he could store nuclear waste responsibly in Skull Valley, he failed miserably.

Parkyn, who heads Private Fuel Storage, was at an energy industry conference in Washington, where he proudly displayed the consortium's license to operate a storage facility in Skull Valley and declared that the plan would go forward regardless of any Utah opposition. "Yes, there is hope for our future," he said.

It was a childish display, akin to a kid doing a victory dance because he grabbed the last slice of pizza from the box. It was an attempt to rub Utah's nose in the fact that it can't stop the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from granting a license.

Aside from a display of bad sportsmanship, Parkyn is also choosing to ignore reality by pushing waste from other states to Utah.

First, Utah's congressional delegation was successful in getting the Cedar Mountain area designated as wilderness. The wilderness area blocks the rail route PFS sought for its waste site, making it difficult, if not impossible, to proceed.

Second, Utah officials will be lobbying the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management to reject PFS's plans to open the dump on Indian land.

Utah's opposition has also caused several PFS member companies to pull their funding. Just having a license may not be enough for Parkyn to bring more companies into the consortium and get the needed capital. Adequate funding is essential, and there are not many companies who will want to get bogged down in a legal quagmire. Waste storage seems to be falling out of fashion these days, and it's less likely to come back than a disco-era leisure suit.

Congress is considering legislation to require that nuclear power plants store waste at reactor sites under federal control rather than ship it cross-country either to Utah or to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The post-9/11 world makes shipping nuclear waste across the country an unacceptable national security risk.

Technology may render storage facilities such as proposed by PFS obsolete. President Bush, as part of a national energy policy, is pushing for reprocessing nuclear waste so it can be used again in reactors. Past efforts at reprocessing were abandoned because the process yielded weapons-grade plutonium that might spark another nuclear arms race. But another process is showing promise, one that would produce reactor fuel.

The process has yet to be demonstrated outside a laboratory, and commercial viability may be many years out, but it appears to be a better alternative than letting radioactive waste sit in the desert 45 miles west of Salt Lake City.

But if the government is moving toward reprocessing, that means waste storage either above or below ground is on its way out. Chances are, the nuclear power industry is watching this development carefully and may decide that investing in ventures like PFS is a waste of money and public good will.

We hope Parkyn enjoys getting that piece of paper. It may be as close as he gets to poisoning Utah.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A5.