Creamer has also been working to expand the company's holdings and contracts. In December, EnergySolutions won a $900 million deal with Exelon Corp. to dismantle the Zion Nuclear Power Station in Illinois. EnergySolutions will decommission two reactors and all other structures on the 257-acre site with completion projected for 2018, and then return the land to Exelon.

EnergySolutions drew controversy this past fall when the company mentioned plans to import up to 20,000 tons of low-level nuclear waste from Italy to the United States by ship. About 1,600 tons of that waste would end up at the disposal landfill in Tooele County.

Creamer in recent years has wanted to expand the Clive facility, but has run into some resistance from the state. Last March, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said he and EnergySolutions struck a deal that maintains the volume of low-level waste the company brings to Utah at current levels, something the governor had sought since the Legislature in its last session passed a controversial waste bill. The measure, SB155, took the Legislature and the governor out of the approval process for requests to expand EnergySolutions' Tooele County landfill. Now only state regulators consider such requests.

In exchange for the volume limit in the deal with Huntsman, EnergySolutions will be able to take 96.2 million cubic feet of capacity for uranium mining by-product waste and use that space to store low-level nuclear waste.

Creamer and his company have spent countless hours working to change the public's perception about EnergySolutions' work, with the aim of advancing the idea that nuclear energy and uses of radioactive material can be valuable and that there are safe ways to deal with waste.

"The fact of the matter is we are better off today because of the radioactive isotopes that are used in technology like x-rays and chemotherapy," he says.

EnergySolutions is now positioned to be the industry leader in nuclear fuel and waste management, with the ability to provide a full range of services from waste disposal to environmental clean up, he says. And he contends that the process of dealing with nuclear energy isn't so scary if you know what you're doing.

Roads and waste

Creamer developed his confidence and business savvy over years of mostly success and, by his own admission, some failure.

He grew up wanting to become a project engineer and build highways for the state of Utah in and around Sevier County. After graduating from South Sevier High School, he enrolled at Southern Utah University before transferring to Utah State University, where he graduated in 1973 with a degree in engineering.

He then went to work for what he called the state Highway Department briefly before moving on to the state Bureau of Environmental Health, now known as the Department of Environmental Quality.