Private Fuel Storage, LLC: The Facility

**Facility Specifications**
Location:	On the reservation of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians in Skull Valley, Utah. (Map showing overview of site.)
Size:	100 acres within a 820-acre controlled area.
Structures:	Up to 4,000 above-ground storage casks on thick reinforced concrete pads, each cask containing 10 metric tons of spent fuel. Will also include administrative and health physics offices; a cask transfer building in which sealed canisters containing the spent fuel will be removed from transportation casks and placed in storage casks.
Access:	By a 32-mile rail line, from the Union Pacific rail line at Low, for the delivery of spent fuel.
Timeframe:	Developed in phases as storage space is needed. Estimated opening: early 2005.
Compliance:	With all federal regulations designed to protect the safety and security of people and the environment.

**Facility Site Map**
This illustration shows the rail line (A) that will enter the PFS facility from the west and run to the cask transfer building (B). There, the shipping casks will be removed from the rail cars. Then the storage canisters will be removed from the shipping casks and placed into steel and concrete storage casks. The storage casks will then be placed on three-foot thick reinforced concrete pads (C). The concrete for the robust storage casks will be made on site at the batch plant (D).

PFS has designed its facility to "start clean and stay clean." This means

the spent fuel will be fully shielded before leaving the power plants where it was used to produce electric power, and
the containers will have no external contamination and will never be opened;
the fuel itself will not be handled while in storage at the Skull Valley facility;
continuous monitoring will ensure that any minimal amount of radiation released under normal, as well as postulated abnormal, conditions will be within the safe dose limits allowed by the NRC.

[ About The Project ]: [ The Need ] [ History of Nuclear Waste Policy ] [ Why Utah? ] [ The Facility ] [ How It Works ] [ Transportation ] [ The Licensing Process ] [ PFS and Its Partners ]