N-waste coming to or through Utah

"The contractors are unwilling to think outside the box because there is a bucket load of cash available to them staying within the box," said Jason Groenewold of Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah (HEAL).

Claire Geddes of Utah Legislative Watch said other options exist, such as vitrifying the waste, a process that turns the waste into a glasslike substance.

"DOE is now trying to get rid of this on the cheap and easy," she said.

At one point, Fluor Fernald suggested building a rail spur into Nevada but officials there opposed the move because it would open the door for nuclear waste shipments, Geddes added.

Still Envirocare wants the business, but it needs a change to its federal license to be allowed to take the waste. And the Fernald tailings would have to be reclassified by Congress as "commercial."

At the request of the Department of Energy, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, wrote a letter to House and Senate negotiators requesting a provision in the energy bill to reclassify the waste. Unbeknownst to Utah lawmakers, Ohio lawmakers had successfully included the same provision in the water and energy appropriations bill.

In the firestorm of opposition that has erupted over the Fernald waste, Bishop cut a deal with Envirocare wherein Envirocare agreed to hold off on the waste.

But critics say Envirocare really hasn't given up anything since the company is on target to receive the waste in April 2005 anyway, based on the Fernald management plan.

In a letter to Envirocare's president and owner Khosrow Semnani, HEAL Utah formally asked Envirocare to withdraw its license modification before the NRC.

"It's a question of credibility, of whether actions speak louder than words," Groenewold said. "The only meaningful way to ensure the state has the decision-making power over the feds is if Envirocare withdraws its request."

Envirocare officials say they have already backed down quite a bit.

"By deferring and pushing out the timetable, we risk losing the business. What that means is 3,800 trucks coming through Utah," Barney said.

Bishop has asked the NRC to reopen the public comment period on Envirocare's application to modify its license to accept hotter radioactive waste.

Currently, the facility's limit is 4,000 picocuries per gram, (a picocurie is a measurement of radioactivity that is one trillionth part of a curie). The company petitioned to have it raised to 100,000 picocuries per gram. That would allow Envirocare to dispose of the waste that contains radium-226, an isotope outlawed in Utah because of its hot radioactivity and the time it takes to decay.

Those factors have Gov. Olene Walker and other critics opposing it.

"I don't think I would ever change my opinion," Walker said Thursday at her monthly KUED news conference. "I don't want hotter waste than we now accept."