Now, don’t get us wrong, we appreciate and applaud EnergySolutions’ announcement that the company will no longer seek to bring foreign nuclear waste to Utah, and instead will help other countries manage their nuclear waste over there, where it was created. This sounds like a more responsible business plan to us and we hope it works out for them. (Really, we do.)

But it’s also critical to remember that this company has made promises before that didn’t work out so well. Back in 2001, when the company was named “Envirocare,” it pledged to Utah officials that it had made the “policy decision” to not seek foreign waste. Here’s the letter:

In 2009, in the midst of the battle over the Italian waste shipment, Company spokesperson Jill Sigal added insult to injury by stating that EnergySolutions had, in fact, already been taking foreign nuclear waste for “over 8 years”--in other words, since 2001--the very year the company pledged NOT to take any foreign waste:

... which gives the strong impression that the company’s last “policy decision” not to take foreign nuclear waste didn’t exactly last very long.

We bring up the 2001 broken pledge because it illustrates an important point. Management teams come and go. Business slogans and priorities and names change. Val Christensen is the third man at the helm of Utah’s nuclear waste dynamo, and it would be naive to believe his “management decision” to not accept foreign nuclear waste--however well-intentioned--is a lasting agreement we can rely on.

The truth is that we need--and have needed--clarity on whether the US should, as a matter of public policy, take the world’s nuclear waste. And the bottom line is that you can’t substitute a corporate promise for good public policy.

That’s why Utah Rep. Jim Matheson and Rep. Jason Chaffetz have renewed calls for the US Congress to pass the Radioactive Import Deterrence (RID) Act, clearly spelling out that the US will not allow the importation of foreign low-level radioactive waste (see: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111...).

The bill passed the House handily with strong bi-partisan support at the end of last year, but EnergySolutions has successfully stalled the bill in the Senate, where it has languished and is in danger of dying altogether. That’s why we’re asking you to call Senator Bennett’s office in a last ditch effort to pass the RID Act:

Phone: Washington DC (202) 224-5444

            Provo UT (801) 851-2525

Web: http://bennett.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Conta...

Remember, we’re the reason that EnergySolutions hasn’t gotten foreign nuclear waste in the door yet, and we can close the door on foreign waste completely through passage of the RID Act--but only if we keep the pressure on.