SALT LAKE CITY - More than 12 million tons of radioactive waste will be moved away from the Colorado River, which provides drinking water for more than 25 million people across the West.

The Department of Energy on Monday said the radioactive tailings about 750 feet from the river near Moab in southeastern Utah will be moved, predominantly by rail, to a proposed holding site at Crescent Junction, Utah, about 30 miles from the Colorado River.

"The only way we can look at this is good news," said Energy Department spokesman Mike Waldron. "We have identified a solution that will help to ensure the environmental quality of the region for generations to come."

The department's decision was announced in the final environmental impact statement for the tailings site. It will become final after being published in the Federal Register, maybe as early as this fall.

The threat of the tailings leaching into the Colorado River was heightened by January flooding in southern Utah.

"It was very much a real issue, and I'm very glad this chapter will be behind us," said Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. "We've had a convergence of lot of positive things here."

Plans are in place to begin moving the tailings to Crescent Junction in the spring of 2007, and Huntsman has given his initial support for that location. Other state officials were not available Monday, which was a state holiday in Utah.

The 94-foot-tall waste pile came from Moab's rich uranium deposits, which were mined in the 1950s for nuclear bombs. The Uranium Reduction Co. sold its mill in 1962 to Atlas Corp., which ran it sporadically until declaring bankruptcy in 1998. The Energy Department took over the site in 2001.

"Taking all the facts into account, we believe the recommendations issued today provide the best solution to cleaning up Moab and protecting the river," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a prepared statement. "The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the Southwest."

The Energy Department "made the right decision to move this pile to a safe location," said U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

The tailings are now mostly stored in the open air on bare ground, surrounded only by a chain-link fence.

At the storage facility in Crescent Junction, the waste would be covered and buried in a hole, lined with a protective layer to keep the material from seeping into the groundwater. Cleanup and moving the pile has been estimated to cost more than $300 million.

The waste began piling up in the 1950s after the Atomic Age turned sleepy communities in Utah into uranium mining boom towns. The department took control of the site in 2001 after the most recent owner of the mill, Denver-based Atlas Corp., declared bankruptcy in 1998.

In November, the Energy Department outlined four options for the site. Three of them called for moving the waste and burying it anywhere from 17 to 85 miles away in a hole. Option No. 4, which would have cost only half as much, called for leaving the pile in place but covering it over with dirt and rocks.

Critics of moving the waste argued that it has been there for decades with little effect. They contended the area is rich in uranium, leading to natural erosion and leaching of radioactive materials into the water, to which the waste added little.

But Huntsman, Utah's congressional delegation, scores of activists and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said that waste is too dangerous to leave it so close to the Colorado River.