Did EnergySolutions make deal or not?

EnergySolutions says it fulfilled a bargain with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. by dropping a request to nearly double the capacity of its radioactive-waste dump in Utah's west desert.

But in a letter released Tuesday, the company's vice president of regulatory affairs said EnergySolutions is preserving its right to seek future approval for the expansion.

Tye Rogers even asked the state Division of Radiation Control to hold onto the company's voluminous file for that possibility.

The notice appeared to undermine the compromise with Huntsman, who last week portrayed it as "the endgame for the in-migration of other states' radioactive waste."

The deal called for EnergySolutions to "promptly withdraw" a license amendment, without qualifying language about preserving future options, according to the governor's office.

EnergySolutions' amendment already has been approved on its engineering merits by state regulators. It would have let the company pile 9.8 million cubic yards of waste on parts of its mile-square dump, up from the licensed cap of 5.5 million cubic yards.

A state attorney said EnergySolutions chose some peculiar language in the letter delivered to regulators Friday.

But Assistant Attorney General Fred Nelson said the company's deal with the governor never required EnergySolutions to permanently renounce ambitions to dump more waste at Clive, a railroad spur 72 miles west of Salt Lake City.

That nuanced position went unmentioned when Huntsman heralded a widely publicized compromise with EnergySolutions, which specializes in decommissioning nuclear power plants and transporting, processing and disposing of waste.

"We thought they were going to completely take the request off the table," said Vanessa Pierce, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, known as HEAL Utah.

"What this indicates is that they have the intention of coming back once Huntsman is out of office to resubmit their expansion plans. If they really want to make good, they'd withdraw that request without caveats."

EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker offered no comment Tuesday on the company's future plans, other than to say it maintained in negotiations with the governor's office that it could return and ask for an expansion.