Other major sponsors include Swisspower, an electric utility consortium, and Scott bicycles.

"This basically represents jumping ahead," said Stuart M. Dalton, director of generation at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium, in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium in Palo Alto, Calif., undertook a survey in 1982, when the reactor manufacturers started to think about new designs.

The New England Power Pool, a utility consortium that coordinates power transfers on a minute-to-minute basis, said the cause was under investigation.

The power research group, a nonprofit utility consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif., hopes to sell 500 next year.

One idea proposed by a utility consortium, Cascade Water Alliance, is to use Lake Tapps, located in Pierce County as a new source of drinkable water.

"It lasted less than a second," said William J. Balet, director of the New York Power Pool, a utility consortium that arranges power transfers.

The Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium, is also contributing $600,000 to the project, which is supposed to be ready to operate at a scale for use by public utilities by 2006.

Dr. Brickner is to announce the program at a meeting later this month of the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif.

The utility consortium, called Private Fuel Storage, does not have the permits it needs to transport waste to the site, however, and the State of Utah is trying to block those.