Tons of uranium soil coming to Utah

Hundreds of tons of soil containing uranium ore from Japan are scheduled to arrive in southeastern Utah within weeks.

State and federal regulators maintain that the soil, although radioactive, is not unsafe to transport, a threat to the local environment or nuclear waste. And the company that will process the material at its White Mesa Mill south of Blanding, International Uranium Corp., assured officials that the soil is safe.

According to Harold Roberts, vice president of corporate development for IUC, the ore is "naturally occurring" and very similar to material the company would bring in from mines in the Four Corners region. The material will be processed into concentrated uranium oxide, commonly known as "yellowcake," which is used to produce fuel rods for nuclear plants.

"People equate this with the waste from nuclear reactors, and that is not accurate," Roberts said. "It's very different . . . people shouldn't be alarmed."

Until it is processed, the soil has a very low-level radioactivity that is only harmful if inhaled, said David McIntyre, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency.

"The hazard is more of a chemical hazard than a radioactive hazard," McIntyre said.

Shipping and processing the material does not require any special permits or licenses because it will be used for commercial purposes and not disposed of as nuclear waste, McIntyre said.

It is that lack of permits that concerns environmental groups, who view the shipment for "processing" as nothing more than a ruse for IUC to become a nuclear waste dumping ground. Currently, the mill does not have the licenses required to dispose of nuclear waste.

Sarah Fields, a member of the nuclear waste advisory committee for the Glen Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club, said that it doesn't make sense for IUC to haul in ore from Japan when it could mine what it needs in the Four Corners area. When coupled with the fact that the company is being paid to take the soil, that it can be stored at the mill for years without being processed, and that anti-nuclear groups in Japan have characterized it as waste, she fears that it is actually just waste with a different name.

"It's really the waste from mined uranium in Japan — it's mine dump," Fields said. "Calling this mine dump ore and saying it is material they will process is totally fallacious."