EnergySolutions wins court battle to import foreign waste

EnergySolutions Inc. has won its legal battle to import low-level radioactive waste from Italy, after a federal court ruling Friday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart in Salt Lake City validated the Salt Lake City-based company's arguments that its efforts to bring the waste to Utah fall outside the regulatory purview of the Northwest Compact, a regional coalition of states tasked with overseeing low-level radioactive-waste management.

Attorneys for EnergySolutions had successfully argued in February that the compact's authority only extended to waste generated within the compact boundaries of its member states and that it was not the intent of Congress to grant any overreaching authority beyond that.

"The law is very clear, and we are very pleased with the ruling," said Jill Segal, a company spokeswoman. "We always believed we are not a compact facility" subject to those regulations, she said.

A spokesman with the Utah Attorney General's Office said late Friday that a decision on whether to appeal the judge's ruling is under review, but top leaders in the state, notably Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., have indicated strident opposition to allowing the foreign waste in Utah.

EnergySolutions operates a 439-acre low-level radioactive-waste disposal facility in Tooele County's west desert, where the company has said the Italian waste would occupy 4.3 acres in the total disposal area.

The waste is not headed there yet, pending the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's approval of an import-license request submitted by EnergySolutions. The timeline on that consideration is not clear, but Friday's victory removes yet one more hurdle for the company, which operates several disposal or processing facilities throughout the United States, as well as the United Kingdom.

In his ruling, Stewart referred to the impetus of the compacts' existence — a burden sharing among regions of the United States to ensure the safe disposal of low-level nuclear waste. EnergySolutions' Clive facility, he said, "is not now and never has been a regional disposal facility."

The regional compactswere set up to regulate regional waste, he said. To grant any authority beyond that, "would be potential to regulate a private (low-level radioactive-waste) facility out of existence (and) is the potential to severely interfere with interstate commerce," an intent which was not spelled out by unclear congressional language in documents that created the compact, Stewart said.