Plan to store Italian nuclear waste rejected
Interstate compact votes to stop EnergySolutions
Utah's compact committee member Bill Sinclair, picked by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., read from a "clarifying" resolution after a 90-minute closed session to discuss a federal lawsuit EnergySolutions filed this week. Representatives on the eight-state compact all voted to approve the resolution.
The compact's document said EnergySolutions does not have the necessary "arrangement" with the compact to accept the Italian waste. Such an arrangement would need to be adopted by the committee prior to EnergySolutions' accepting that waste in Utah.
Sinclair said the intent of the resolution was to send a "clear message" on the compact's stand on foreign waste. A short time later the committee approved a resolution amendment that states the compact will also disregard a waste classification as domestic after incineration, that is, if the waste being incinerated originated in a foreign country.
The Northwest Compact is one of several throughout the country that help manage disposal of potentially dangerous waste from state to state. Utah is part of an eight-state compact that includes Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and Oregon. Waste coming from Tennessee to Utah is under the watch of the Southeast Compact and Tennessee's own laws governing radioactive waste classification.
In an April 23 letter to compact committee members, Christensen said the company's license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has generated "political reactions, based almost entirely on misinformation."
License approval would mean EnergySolutions could accept up to 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from closed nuclear reactors in Italy. The bulk of materials would be processed and recycled at an EnergySolutions facility in Tennessee. About one-third of the materials would be metal to be recycled for "beneficial" use, EnergySolutions' Tye Rogers said.
Then about 1,600 tons of Class A waste left over after processing would be transported to the company's disposal site in Clive, Tooele County. The company is not licensed to accept hotter Class D or C waste, which nuclear watchdog group Institute for Energy and Environmental Research president Arjun Makhijani recently suggested would actually be coming to Clive. EnergySolutions has denied that claim.
For Christensen, the main debatable issue should be whether his company's Clive facility in Tooele County has the capacity to store the waste. Rogers told the committee there is more than enough room, with 33 years of life left at the Clive site if an additional area there is developed for expanded disposal operations.
Recent comments
... RM Power should build a nuclear power plant in the West Desert...
I Believe | May 9, 2008 at 11:40 p.m.
Thank goodness clearer heads prevailed!! Unfortunately, there are...
YAY!!! | May 9, 2008 at 5:38 p.m.
Ok, what is not being said is that nuclear waste is going to be stored...
Dan | May 9, 2008 at 3:27 p.m.
