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Narrator: The Prairie Island nuclear power plant sits on a bank of the Mississippi River as the river forms the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Prairie Island houses two of the more than one hundred nuclear reactors that produce electricity in the nation.

Energized by highly radioactive uranium fuel rods, nuclear power plants account for twenty percent of the nation's electricity. . .in some areas nuclear reactors provide up to sixty percent of the power.

Prairie Island has been on line for more than twenty years.

And as the 21st century dawns, the plant is starting to run out of time.

Like every nuclear power plant, Prairie Island must refuel its reactors every 18 months. . .putting fresh uranium rods into the core, and removing older rods.

"Old" by reactor standards, the spent fuel rods are still lethally radioactive. . .and have to be handled and stored with care.

But the Prairie Island units. . . and other nuclear power plants. . . are running out of room to store the radioactive waste at the plant site.

Steven Barrowes, Ph.D.: "It's the sword of Damocles hanging over your head, that soon as you run out of space, you're going to have to shut down that nuclear power plant, unless you can find some other place to put that."

Gary Sandquist, Ph.D.: "Now, they could shut down the plant, and some critics would like that. But can we afford to forego some of that 20 percent of electrical power. Right now we need more, not less."

Narrator: Thirty years ago the federal government promised the nuclear power industry that handling the radioactive waste would be the job of the federal government. Promises were made, and deadlines were set.

The Federal Department of Energy was given the job of dealing with what is potentially the nation's most lethal industrial waste.

During the 1990s, the promises and deadlines fell apart.

Utility companies that run the nuclear power plants have started to sue the federal government. Yet the ability of the government to effectively deal with high level radioactive waste is still in doubt.

In 1997 a consortium of eight of the nation's largest nuclear power utilities announced they would wait no longer.

They would build their own temporary storage site for the radioactive fuel rods. It would be the first private, high-level radioactive storage site in the nation.

Scott Northard, Xcel Energy: "It makes much more sense to build a large centralized storage facility than 72 smaller ones spread throughout the United States."

Narrator: Ninety percent of the nation's nuclear power plants are located east of the Rocky Mountains.

The utilities, now working under the banner of Private Fuel Storage, struck a deal to store the waste west of the Rockies.

Not a deal with a state.

Private Fuel Storage signed the contract with the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Indian Tribe. The Band takes its name from the stark landscape of its reservation lands located less than an hour's drive west of Salt Lake City, Utah.

If approved by federal regulators, Private Fuel Storage would ship approximately 80 million pounds of radioactive fuel rods to Utah.

The rods would be stored in steel casks and set on a concrete floor in the desert landscape of the Skull Valley Goshutes. They could remain for up to 40 years.

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