The uranium is depleted, but the state Radiation Control Board's resolve to protect Utahns is not.

After more than a year of debating the dangers of depleted uranium, the board stuck to its guns this week by requiring EnergySolutions to prepare a study proving that its landfill can safely contain this unique waste for 10,000 years and beyond.
The performance assessment of the disposal firm's low-level radioactive waste disposal facility at Clive in Tooele County will take about a year for the company to prepare. The study will then be subjected to an extensive review by state regulators.

Additional deposits of depleted uranium -- about 49,000 tons are already buried at Clive -- will be prohibited until the process is complete.

It's a wise move by the board. If approved for disposal in Utah, depleted uranium, which becomes increasingly radioactive and will eventually exceed state safety standards before peaking in a million years, will be here forever.

Given that time frame, it only seems prudent to take a year or two to assure that it can be stored here safely. In fact, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission should have shown similar restraint in March 2009 before prematurely approving depleted uranium for burial in shallow Class A landfills like EnergySolutions', which are designed for waste that is considered safe after a century.

After voting to classify depleted uranium as low-level Class A waste in March 2009, the NRC board instructed agency staff to determine if any special precautions --- deeper burial, for example, or a heavier radon barrier -- would be necessary. That after-the-fact study is still under way.

Unfortunately, that hasty decision by the NRC forms the basis for EnergySolutions' arguments against conducting the state-required study and delaying additional shipments of depleted uranium: Depleted uranium is Class A waste, the landfill is designed for Class A waste. What's the problem?

Further, the company, which has threatened legal action against the state, correctly notes that Utah law prohibits the control board from enacting regulations more stringent than the existing federal guidelines unless there is evidence that the federal law is inadequate. But a federal law that allows waste that remains dangerous for a million years to be placed in a landfill designed for waste that decays away in a century doesn't seem like an adequate law.

If EnergySolutions is truly concerned about Utah, as its television commercials suggest, the company will set aside all thoughts of a lawsuit and allow the control board to exhibit the due diligence that the NRC should have shown.