Utah petition filed over Italy nuclear waste

The Utah attorney general filed a petition Tuesday to intervene in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's decision process on whether to allow EnergySolutions to import into Utah waste from old nuclear reactors in Italy.

The NRC also received more than 2,500 responses by Tuesday's final day of a public comment period to weigh in on a proposal by EnergySolutions to process Italian radioactive materials at a site in Tennessee and then store up to 1,600 tons of leftover waste at the company's dump in Tooele County, about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City.

Tuesday marked the last day for Utah to file its petition, which questions the risk to public health and safety and raises the issue of EnergySolutions' apparent appetite for possibly more proposals to import foreign waste in the future. The petition also asks for the NRC to deny the company's license application to import the Italian waste.

"The high public interest in this issue is one reason the Commission should allow the state of Utah to intervene," the petition reads. The document filed with the NRC Tuesday further states that Utah already "struggles" with the perception that it's a dumping ground of radioactive waste and that importing more materials from Italy or other global sources would result in "economic harm" for Utah.

"We want to be a player in the NRC licensing process," Bill Sinclair said about the petition. He is the deputy director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s appointed representative on the eight-state Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management.

The compact last May told the NRC it won't allow EnergySolutions to store up to 1,600 tons of radioactive waste from Italy at the company's Clive facility in Tooele County. EnergySolutions recently filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the compact's authority.

Sinclair said the approach of the compact in the future might be to ask, "Why bother?" if a federal judge ends up in effect telling the NRC that the compact has no authority in regulating EnergySolutions' operations at its Clive site.

"That way any waste from anywhere could go to any facility," Sinclair said.

The next step in the proposal process will be for the NRC to evaluate responses it has received.

"They have been overwhelmingly negative," the NRC's David McIntyre said about the public comments his office received. Some of the responses have been in support of the proposal. "We will review the comments, looking for any technical or legal objections to the proposed license." McIntyre said the earliest the NRC will decide on the proposal is September.