A nuclear paradox: EnergySolutions CEO is attempting to change opinions on radioactive waste

When EnergySolutions CEO Steve Creamer was growing up in the small southern Utah town of Monroe, he and his family would watch the smoke from mushroom clouds rise into the sky as the federal government conducted nuclear testing in the Nevada desert.

The whole western sky would have a green glow for several weeks after the tests, Creamer recalls. In the summer when his family would drive along the highway to Zion National Park, state troopers would warn drivers to roll up their windows to avoid inhaling the fumes from the green smoke that was blowing over the area.

At the time, they had little understanding of how profoundly their lives would be affected by those plumes of toxic smoke. Years later, Creamer's father died of lymphoma that his son believes may have been a result of those days downwind of the atomic testing range.

Steve Creamer says his work at EnergySolutions, a nuclear-waste disposal and management company, was motivated by his family's experience as downwinders.

"My dad died at the same age I am right now: 56," he says. "My mother and my family will always believe that we were affected by 'the downwinder's,' and what we're trying to do is keep that from happening again. What we do is clean up things like that, we handle them safely, we transport them safely."

Creamer became EnergySolutions' chairman and chief executive officer in 2004, when he struck the deal to buy Envirocare, a company that ran a nuclear-waste facility in Tooele County. Envirocare, and now EnergySolutions, have drawn criticism from many Utah residents and environmentalists who oppose bringing nuclear waste into the state and who worry the company will make the state a nuclear dumping ground.

The EnergySolutions facility in Clive, 70 miles west of Salt Lake City, handles more than 95 percent of all commercial low-level radioactive waste in the United States, according to the Government Accountability Office. The company also now has processing sites in Utah, Tennessee, South Carolina and the United Kingdom.

EnergySolutions communications director Mark Walker describes his boss as driven: "You can't outwork him, and you'll never get to the office before him."

Expanding a company

This past November, Creamer took the company public, offering 11.85 million shares at $19 to $21 per share. The company's controlling stockholder, ENV Holdings LLC, offered 18.15 million shares. Since then, the company's shares have traded in the range of $22.75 to $28.45 per share.