EnergySolutions, competitor join together on blended waste venture

SALT LAKE CITY  — A venture that has EnergySolutions teaming with a former corporate foe means blended waste will be disposed in Tooele County in a solid, homogeneous form in contrast to a mix of powdery, radioactive resins.

Officially announced Tuesday by EnergySolutions officials, the partnership involves the Salt Lake-based company and Studsvik Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Stockholm, Sweden's Studsvik Holding.

The venture, called Semprasafe, taps a process Studsvik developed called THOR.

Essentially, it superheats ion exchange resins produced by nuclear power plants, thermally baking them into a solid, non-organic mold. Although the resins range in radioactive concentrations, the final "reformed" residue is a blend that does not exceed Class A limits, which EnergySolutions' Clive, Tooele County, facility is licensed to accept.

Once that process is complete at Studsvik's Erwin, Tenn., facility, the material can then be disposed of at Clive in containers long-term.

Company spokesman Mark Walker said the arrangement, officially inked in December, opens up new paths for the safe disposal of radioactive resins that have for years sat in storage.

The long-term storage of so-called blended waste has been a controversial issue in Utah, with critics claiming there are no guarantees that hotter radioactive material mixed with lower level concentrations won't exceed state-imposed limits.

A lot of different analogies have been tossed about to describe blending waste. EnergySolutions said the mix of such resins results in a sugar cookie of sorts with a blend of isotopes that have reached the proper concentrations that do not exceed Class A levels. Critics, such as HEAL Utah, say such blending of resins doesn't come without hot spots — sort of like a chocolate chip cookie — and those hot spots violate the company's licensing agreement with the state.

Members of the state Radiation Control Board have issued a policy statement asserting their opposition to blending for the purpose of dilution, while at the same time conceding that if the end product doesn't exceed Class A levels of radioactivity, there is no enhanced risk to public health and the environment.

The state, too, is in the process of formalizing a new rule on "unique" waste streams and the conditions under which they are disposed, but Walker said the company does not consider blended waste "unique." That rule was approved Tuesday afternoon at meeting of the Radiation Control Board.