Plan to store Italian nuclear waste rejected

BOISE — The EnergySolutions proposal to store radioactive waste from Italy in Utah received a unanimous thumbs down Thursday from the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management.

Utah's compact committee member Bill Sinclair, picked by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., read from a "clarifying" resolution after a 90-minute closed session to discuss a federal lawsuit EnergySolutions filed this week. Representatives on the eight-state compact all voted to approve the resolution.

The compact's document said EnergySolutions does not have the necessary "arrangement" with the compact to accept the Italian waste. Such an arrangement would need to be adopted by the committee prior to EnergySolutions' accepting that waste in Utah.

Sinclair said the intent of the resolution was to send a "clear message" on the compact's stand on foreign waste. A short time later the committee approved a resolution amendment that states the compact will also disregard a waste classification as domestic after incineration, that is, if the waste being incinerated originated in a foreign country.

The Northwest Compact is one of several throughout the country that help manage disposal of potentially dangerous waste from state to state. Utah is part of an eight-state compact that includes Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and Oregon. Waste coming from Tennessee to Utah is under the watch of the Southeast Compact and Tennessee's own laws governing radioactive waste classification.

The committee's decisions came after EnergySolutions general counsel Val John Christensen asked the compact's committee to look past the "emotional protest of 'not in my backyard.'"

In an April 23 letter to compact committee members, Christensen said the company's license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has generated "political reactions, based almost entirely on misinformation."

License approval would mean EnergySolutions could accept up to 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from closed nuclear reactors in Italy. The bulk of materials would be processed and recycled at an EnergySolutions facility in Tennessee. About one-third of the materials would be metal to be recycled for "beneficial" use, EnergySolutions' Tye Rogers said.

Then about 1,600 tons of Class A waste left over after processing would be transported to the company's disposal site in Clive, Tooele County. The company is not licensed to accept hotter Class D or C waste, which nuclear watchdog group Institute for Energy and Environmental Research president Arjun Makhijani recently suggested would actually be coming to Clive. EnergySolutions has denied that claim.