From Deseret News archives:
EnergySolutions bill passes Senate committee
SB155 was approved without dissent by the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee. It would allow the state's only disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste to stack material higher, or make other changes on its square-mile Section 32, without going to the Legislature or governor for approval.
However, state regulators would still need to review and decide whether to allow any amendments to EnergySolutions' license.
EnergySolutions is seeking to raise its disposal cell from the current 54 to 83 feet, and environmentalists have objected to that. Supporters say it is a better solution to have material piled safely in a smaller footprint, than to spread it around in a larger site.
Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble, R-Provo, the bill's co-sponsor, said he was a member of a state hazardous and radioactive materials task for 2 1/2 years. When the task force's recommendations were transformed into law, he said, a provision was inadvertently removed. SB155 was drafted to return that rule, he said.
If EnergySolutions wants to expand beyond its present operations on Section 32, he said, that is not a matter covered by the bill. The bill facilitates its present operations.
"This bill does not have any impact whatsoever on the regulatory process," said Tim Barney, representing EnergySolutions.
David Litvin, president of the Utah Mining Association, said the group supports the measure.
The bill would "strip away all political accountability for nuclear waste expansion" at Section 32, charged Christopher Thomas, policy director for the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. It would "eviscerate" a 1990 requirement by the Legislature that required heightened attention to such actions, he said.
If SB155 passes, Thomas added, nobody will ever be say that "enough is enough to further expansions at the existing EnergySolutions site."
Class A waste may sound benign, he said, but one form of it — containerized Class A — is so hot that an EnergySolutions employee could not directly sample it. A close contact without the container could be equivalent to 20,000 chest X-rays per hour, he said.
He called for the committee to turn down SB155.
Minority Whip Sen. Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake, said SB155 simply says that if EnergySolutions wants to use a dump truck in a different part of its compound, it doesn't need the approval of the governor and Legislator. That's because they are working within the area regulated by the Department of Environmental Quality, he said.
