Deseret News (Salt Lake City): N-storage sounds like substantially risky bet for Utah

Like most Christian churches, my church teaches that gambling is a menace to society, that Christians should abstain from gambling and should minister to those victimized by gambling.

As religious tenets go, abstaining from gambling is a no-brainer for me. It's not just an issue of morality, it's an issue of economics. I can think of a million other ways to spend my hard- earned money than to feed it into a slot machine or wager it at the roulette table. Being cooped up in a smoke-filled building with people, some of whom are gambling away their rent and grocery money, is not my idea of entertainment.

I say this as a person who has scratched a couple of lottery cards in her day. I played nickel slots in Wendover twice. I've bet on horse racing. I've become convinced it would be more satisfying to light money on fire and watch it burn than to squander it away at a gaming table. Different means, same outcome.

A few years ago, I covered an initiative campaign to legalize horse-race betting in Utah. As you may recall, it failed miserably at the polls. Opponents of the initiative said giving the OK to pari- mutuel wagering would open the door to gaming on Indian reservations, which was another reason to keep gambling out of Utah. Utah and Hawaii remain the only states that prohibit gambling.

Elsewhere, many tribes consider gambling their economic salvation. They say it creates tourism, jobs and economic development. No one talks about the accompanying social problems that come with acquiring material gain by chance and at the expense of one's neighbor. I don't like gaming because it fosters the notion that work is unimportant and that all of our problems can be solved with money.

I've thought a lot about gaming in Utah in recent weeks in the context of the Skull Valley band of Goshutes, which has negotiated with a consortium of nuclear power utilities to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel rods on the tribe's reservation in Tooele County.

I'm not suggesting that a full-scale Caesar's Palace-like casino would have been the answer to the Goshutes' economic woes. But with that option off the table, the tribe may have landed on a substantially riskier proposition on its reservation: becoming the de facto Yucca Mountain.

The risks are much different, I'll grant you. Most people gamble at their own peril, although the negative impacts of gambling do not confine themselves to the individual throwing down the poker chips or feeding coins into a slot machine. If Mom or Dad bets the mortgage, the entire family's security is jeopardized.

Moving spent nuclear fuel rods to Utah would likewise imperil the entire nation, with little prospect of benefit to the public. But If I was a terrorist bent on making a nuclear weapon, I'd be smacking my lips at the prospect of stealing or hijacking a truck or train carrying spent nuclear fuel rods across the county. Five years ago I would have dismissed such talk as the stuff of an action-adventure motion picture. After four commercial jets were hijacked and used as missiles to plow into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a fourth that crashed in rural Pennsylvania, we'd better be open to the prospect of any and all possibilities.

If the spent fuel rods are as safe as the utilities purport, why not leave them where they are until a permanent solution can be determined?

The business deal between the Skull Valley Goshutes and Private Fuel Storage, the consortium of utilities, is proprietary, so the financial benefit to the tribe for permitting the disposal on their land is speculative at best. It would be accurate to say that it's very lucrative. A billion dollar baby, one might say.

The issue is further complicated by a federal law that requires the U.S. government to take nuke waste off the hands of nuclear power operators. Eight sites have closed their doors, and operators are spending about $5 million a year to secure each site until the government comes up with a permanent solution. Add to that the potential of a legal settlement for the government's delays in assuming responsibility for the waste.

Is it just me, or does it feel as though other interests are gambling away our security? It's yet another game of chance we can't afford to play.

Marjorie Cortez is a Deseret Morning News editorial writer. E- mail her at marjorie@desnews.com