Bennett seeks to stall bill to ban nuclear waste

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said Friday he will seek to stall in the Senate a bill that the House passed this week to block Energy?Solutions from importing 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste to Utah.

"I believe the legislation is premature," Bennett said in written statement.

He has accepted $49,300 in campaign donations from EnergySolutions and its employees since 2005, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In fact, that group says Bennett has accepted more donations from the waste industry than any 2010 congressional candidate in the nation.

Bennett said he wants to allow federal appeals courts to rule on a case contesting whether Utah and a northwest compact of states have the authority to block Energy?Solutions from importing such waste.

A lower court ruled that EnergySolutions is a private facility and not part of a national compact system that Congress set up to let regions decide what wastes they would import, but the case is on appeal.

"Until we can examine the court's final decision and carefully review the bill's potential implications to national security, energy development and free trade, it is too soon to pursue congressional action," Bennett said. "Sen. (Orrin) Hatch and I continue to closely monitor this issue as it develops."

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., pushed a bill through the House on a 309-112 vote this week to ban importing such waste, which includes lab coats, shoe coverings and cleaning cloths from nuclear power plants.

EnergySolutions has proposed to process 20,000 tons of Italian waste in Tennessee and dump it in Utah. Matheson said proposals have been floated to bring in additional waste from Brazil, Mexico and Great Britain.

Matheson told the House this week that federal regulators have said they do not have the authority to stop imports of such foreign waste, so Matheson told the House that Congress should itself decide to ban it.

"No other country in the world takes another country's radioactive waste," Matheson told the House. "I don't think we should either."

He said the bill would not create restraint of trade because, "for trade to exist, you have goods and services going in both directions, not just one," and no other country accepts such foreign waste.

"I don't understand how this in any way could be described as a restraint of trade," Matheson said.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who also co-sponsored the bill in the House, said in debate this week "there's a reason no place in Europe, even with $1 billion on the line, has stepped up to take foreign waste: It's dangerous. It's very dangerous."

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, was out of town and missed the vote this week but had previously spoken against the legislation. He was once a state lobbyist for EnergySolutions and received about $26,000 from the company's political action committee and employees for his 2008 election and $5,000 this year.

e-mail: lee@desnews.com