BY JUDY FAHYS
The Salt Lake Tribune

First published Jun 15 2011 06:21PM
Updated Jun 15, 2011 11:41PM
EnergySolutions has spent nearly two years on an engineering report to show its Tooele County disposal site can handle large volumes of depleted uranium.

But, just as the Salt Lake City company prepares to detail its findings at a special public meeting Thursday, a local environmental group is already asking if the state’s requirements for depleted uranium are tough enough.

Matt Pacenza, policy director for the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, urged state radiation-control regulators to keep in mind the federal standards for depleted uranium and other "unique waste streams" proposed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC is contemplating stricter standards than Utah’s, he noted.

"We are wondering whether this just-completed performance assessment [of the EnergySolutions site] will conform to these [proposed NRC] rules," Pacenza said at the Radiation Control Board meeting Tuesday.

Just over a year ago, the board enacted a state regulation on depleted uranium that was aimed at protecting public health over the long run.

It requires a company that wants to take large volumes of depleted uranium to analyze, among other questions, how well the site will stand up to conditions such as flooding that might be expected to occur over 10,000 years. The state regulation also requires the report to look at a what-if "intruder scenario" to demonstrate that someone who stumbles onto the site after it’s closed won’t suffer an excessive dose of radiation.

Under the proposed NRC regulations, the engineering report is required to consider containment for 20,000 years, with an eye on climate changes.

The logic behind these tougher-than-usual standards is that depleted uranium, unlike most other types of low-level radioactive waste, gets more and more hazardous for about 1 million years. Under regulations developed around 30 years ago, radioactive waste sites like EnergySolutions’ are designed to take waste that loses most of its radiation hazard after about 100 years.

Published Jun 8, 2011 09:51:02PM 22 Comments

The problem is, Utah is years ahead of the NRC in enacting its depleted uranium regulation. And eventually, EnergySolutions will have to meet the federal standards anyway.

EnergySolutions did not respond to a call seeking comment. And its engineering study will not be publicly available until Thursday’s public presentation.

Rusty Lundberg, director of the Radiation Control Division, noted that the Utah’s regulation is already law, while NRC’s regulations are still a work in progress.

But he added: "That does raise a question for us."

EnergySolutions already has buried about 49,000 tons of depleted uranium on-site and 11,000 tons more in storage at its mile-square landfill in Tooele County. The federal government has 700,000 tons in storage and awaiting disposal, and uranium enrichment plants are expected to produce another 700,000 tons in the years to come.

The Utah site currently is the nation’s only commercial alternative for the waste.

fahys@sltrib.com