Will 'illegal' nuclear waste come to Utah?

Backed by new information from a nuclear-watchdog group, the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah demanded answers Monday from EnergySolutions about its plans to accept Class A radioactive waste from Italy and about whether hotter "illegal" waste will somehow slip into Utah.

"They're trying to invent a worst-case scenario that doesn't exist," said EnergySolutions spokesman John Ward.

He said the materials would be inspected four times before anything is dumped in Utah. Ward said those inspections guarantee that no materials will come from Italy into the United States that don't meet permit requirements. "It's that simple," he said.

However, HEAL's demand is one that a key Utah official said may not be needed now.

Last week Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. announced that he will use the state's representative on the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management to vote against any proposals or to even veto plans to accept foreign nuclear waste in Utah.

Utah Department of Environmental Quality deputy director Bill Sinclair is the current representative on the eight-state compact, which will meet May 8 in Boise to hear EnergySolutions' proposal.

"I'm in total agreement," Sinclair said on the phone about Huntsman's tough stance.

If he needs to, Sinclair said he will use Utah's right on the compact to exercise the state's "exclusionary authority" to block the waste. First, though, a member of the compact would need to make a motion to amend an existing agreement between EnergySolutions and the compact. That motion would require a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

Still, HEAL's Vanessa Pierce wants EnergySolutions to prove to the public that it won't be accepting any "illegal" waste from Italy for disposal in Utah.

"EnergySolutions claims that some of the Italian waste can come to its dump site in Utah, when the available data suggest this nuclear junk as a whole could be Class C or higher," Pierce said in a statement.

Pierce said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should demand details of EnergySolutions' plans to import 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from closed nuclear power plants in Italy. After the waste is processed in Tennessee, up to 1,600 tons of whatever is left over would be transported to Clive, Tooele County, for disposal at the company's dump site.