Like a teenager running from accountability, EnergySolutions is pulling out every adolescent trick in the book to expand its nuclear waste dump by stacking waste nearly eight stories high while avoiding the legislative and gubernatorial scrutiny the law seems to require. Here's how:

Breaking promises: When Envirocare changed ownership last year, new CEO Steve Creamer announced that the company was abandoning its push for hotter nuclear waste and wouldn¹t ask for anything in return. But just two weeks later, the company quietly submitted a proposal to geographically double in size.

Asking the other parent: Gov. Jon Huntsman said "no" to that boundary expansion. So, like a stubborn adolescent, EnergySolutions came up with a new way to expand by stacking nuclear waste 83 feet above ground. With tentative approval from state regulators, they argue, the Legislature and the governor won¹t have the option to say "no" this time.

Bending the rules: Three scenarios enacted into state law in 1990 require legislative and gubernatorial approval of nuclear dump expansions: going beyond existing boundaries, new construction costing more than 50 percent of original construction and increasing capacity 50 percent over the Jan. 1, 1990, capacity. Incredibly, state regulators failed to apply these rules to previous expansions. EnergySolutions and state regulators say the law doesn¹t limit how much waste the company can dump on its property as long as it doesn¹t spill over existing boundaries and elected leaders can¹t do a thing about it.

Getting defensive: EnergySolutions charges that critics of the expansion just don¹t get it and that we wrongly accuse them of breaking the law that we pick on them. They want to frame this debate in the most technical terms where EnergySolutions has the advantage of using hired experts and lawyers to limit citizen participation and shift attention away from the underlying question: Are the standards that allow expansion too low and their interpretation too loose?

Current radiation chief Dane Finerfrock can't be blamed entirely for bizarre interpretations he inherited and that the company now expects him to follow. But the initial interpretations and even the original license itself were conceived in an era of corruption. Former radiation chief Larry Anderson took $600,000 in gifts and cash from the dump¹s former owner. EnergySolutions says the rules need to be applied consistently, even if they¹re applied consistently wrong.

Before EnergySolutions makes its dump into a giant hump, the critical rules, standards and baselines that govern expansion, now and in the future, need to be clarified and written into EnergySolutions' license. Firm guidance is needed.

Until then, like an ornery adolescent, EnergySolutions will continue to break promises, bend the rules and change the subject to avoid accountability.