by Miller Hudson

About the author: Miller Hudson is a Denver public relations consultant.

Editor's note: The Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico received two grants worth $300,000 in the early 1990s from the Department of Energy to study the feasibility of building a temporary storage facility for spent nuclear fuel rods on their reservation. When the tribe indicated its willingness to continue the feasibility study, the federal government ended the program. In 1994 the Mescaleros negotiated directly with a consortium of nuclear utility companies to develop a monitored retrieval storage (MRS) facility for spent nuclear fuel on the reservation. The tribe suspended the negotiation with the consortium in 1996.

A small Apache tribe in New Mexico is currently concluding negotiations with 33 nuclear utilities for the joint construction and operation of a centralized spent fuel storage facility. [The negotiations were...