Anti-nuclear activists say Department of Energy unclear on waste

SALT LAKE CITY — Anti-nuclear activists concerned over Utah's storage of depleted uranium are accusing the Department of Energy of sidestepping its own rules by allowing a trainload of radioactive waste to roll into Tooele County.

HEAL Utah is calling on the department to immediately remove the 3,000 tons of waste sitting in storage at EnergySolutions' Clive facility and have also asked for a meeting with top Energy Department officials to gain assurances that no more of the material is headed to the state.

The group held a media advisory Wednesday to outline the premises of a report, healutah.org/DuReport, it commissioned on depleted uranium. The report has been given to Gov. Gary Herbert and made available to Energy Department officials.

Vanessa Pierce, HEAL Utah's executive director, said the organization is concerned whether the department is acting in "good faith" because of conflicting information that has been released about two remaining shipments that had been destined for Utah.

Herbert, while in Washington, D.C., met with the department's assistant secretary, Inez Triay, and brokered an agreement that the final two trainloads would be diverted elsewhere.

Not long afterward, however, EnergySolutions' chief executive officer, Val Christensen, assured investors in a conference call that the company's Clive facility would be the "ultimate disposition path."

In her letter, Pierce said such ambiguities are troubling, especially as both state and federal regulators work to develop rules that would govern site-specific restrictions to appropriately store the waste, which grows more radioactive over time.

"Furthermore, we are generally concerned that the DOE has sacrificed the observance of rules, laws and basic fairness, for the sake of expediently getting rid of large stockpiles of uranium waste," the letter reads.

Pierce added that it is suspect that even as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission works to update regulations regarding the disposal of large amounts of the material, the Energy Department is moving "quickly" to dispose of the uranium waste before the regulations are put in place.

Utahns, she said, "are left to question the basic fairness of the process."

HEAL wants the department to publicly clarify that the two remaining trainloads from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina will never be disposed of in Utah and to pledge to neither "manipulate nor circumvent" the state's long-term study of the safety of storing depleted uranium in Utah.

Pierce added that the report detailed in Wednesday's media briefing clearly illustrates that depleted uranium — derived from the enrichment process of uranium — exceeds low-level waste levels. It is one more example of "an inherent nuclear waste disposal policy."