ENVIRONMENT : Nuclear Dump Study Triggers Tribal Fears : New Mexico’s Mescaleros consider government’s bid to temporarily store spent reactor fuel. An opponent calls targeting of reservations ‘a form of genocide.’

From the four-lane highway winding through the mountains to the pine-shaded subdivisions lined with modern homes, the Mescalero Apache reservation exudes prosperity. Yet most Mescaleros lived in tents and wickiups as recently as the 1930s.

Most of the 3,500-member tribe’s rapid development has occurred since longtime President Wendell Chino joined the tribal council 40 years ago. Chino has single-mindedly pursued federal funds for housing and other services while backing such ventures as a sawmill, a cattle operation and a ski resort.

But Chino’s latest bid for economic self-sufficiency has some Mescaleros questioning whether his vision has gone awry.

Chino and the tribal council have accepted a $100,000 federal grant to study a plan to temporarily store highly radioactive spent reactor fuel on the 460,000-acre reservation while the nation builds a permanent underground nuclear waste repository. Construction and operation of a temporary site, called a monitored retrievable storage facility, could create many jobs and attract millions in government incentives over its 40-year projected life.

That is a bad deal, said Harlyn Geronimo, who ran unsuccessfully against Chino in November.

“The majority of the people are against any type of nuclear waste site on the reservation,” he said. “It’s totally going against the tribal tradition. The Apache people live in harmony with Mother Nature.”

Chino has branded such opposition to the study premature and politically motivated. He has vowed to drop the project if substantial drawbacks appear.

Tribal Vice President Keith Miller, while personally skeptical of the plan, is keeping an open mind until after leaders tour reactors and nuclear fuel processing plants later this month. “I really couldn’t say where this thing is going right now,” he said.

The heart of the problem is what to do with wastes from 112 commercial reactors that generate 20% of the nation’s electricity.

Long stainless steel rods filled with spent uranium pellets are stored at reactor sites, some in water-filled pools and the rest in concrete bunkers. But with the current 20,000 metric tons of spent fuel expected to double by the end of the decade, such sites are running out of room.

The government hopes one day to bury spent fuel deep underground in the belief it will be safe for the next 10,000 years. But a plan for a repository beneath Nevada’s Yucca Mountain has encountered technical problems, and no permanent site is expected to open before 2010.

Meanwhile, Congress in 1987 created the Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator to ask states and Indian tribes to accept permanent or temporary waste storage. Negotiator David H. Leroy in October issued formal invitations to enter into talks.

The Mescaleros and their consultants, Pacific Nuclear Systems Inc. and Science Applications International Corp., responded promptly and were the first to get a feasibility grant.

Pacific Nuclear’s Miller Hudson said spent fuel would be moved by rail in 110-ton stainless-steel casks. At the temporary site, steel canisters containing spent fuel rods would be slid from the casks into thick-walled steel tubes embedded in concrete bunkers, where they would await transfer to a permanent site.

The transfer and storage process is safe, Hudson said. Storage bunkers and transportation casks already in use have passed rigorous tests for resistance to crashes and fires.

Although no temporary facility may open before a permanent site is designated, the tribe could guarantee that such storage does not become permanent by negotiating financial penalties and reserving the option to unload the spent fuel if a permanent site is not ready, Hudson said.

But talk of government guarantees does not impress Mescalero environmentalist Donalyn Torres, who calls the targeting of American Indians for negotiations “a form of genocide.”

“From a Native American standpoint, I have great distrust for these people,” she said. “They have broken 150 treaties with Native Americans. This is just another treaty that is going to be broken.”