EnergySolutions Inc. put the brakes on expansion plans for its Tooele radioactive waste site two years ago in an agreement with then-Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who hailed the deal as a "monumental win" for Utah residents.

But, now that the U.S. District Court for Utah has ruled the waste site is not under the thumb of regional waste authorities, the company says the deal is obsolete.

"When the district court ruled that the Northwest Compact lacked jurisdiction over the Clive [Tooele County] facility," company president Val Christensen said in an e-mail to The Tribune this week, "the standstill agreement with Gov. Huntsman became unnecessary."

Gov. Gary Herbert, who succeeded Huntsman when he left in August to become U.S. ambassador to China, insists the size-limitation deal remains in force.

"Our understanding is this agreement is still binding," said Angie Welling, Herbert's spokeswoman. The view is echoed by state environmental regulators.

Talk of a potential EnergySolutions expansion comes at a time of strong public opposition to key company initiatives -- to import waste from foreign nations, to blend hotter low-level waste with material already accepted and to bury large volumes of depleted uranium, which becomes increasingly hazardous for a million years.

It also comes as the publicly-traded company repeatedly describes the site as vital to future profits.
EnergySolutions would not say when it might
try to expand its mile-square facility.

But some light was shed on the issue during Christensen's testimony Oct. 16 before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and the Environment, where he assured members the Utah site has plenty of room to grow. If the country runs out of capacity for low-level waste from U.S. reactors and cleanups, he said, EnergySolutions can double its current size and satisfy domestic and international demand for another 120 years.

Christensen said not only is there 140 million cubic feet of capacity at the 20-year-old site that is already licensed, but there's another 485 million cubic feet that could be licensed. That's roughly enough to fill another square mile with low-level radioactive waste.

"We have other capacity that is not yet licensed that is accessible through the licensing process if capacity ever becomes an issue," he said while disputing the need for the Radioactive Import Deterrence [RID] Act. The bipartisan federal legislation would ban most disposal of foreign-generated waste in the United States.

Though he restated his company's promise to limit 5 percent of the Utah site's current capacity to imported waste and pledged to import waste for no more than a decade, Christensen said nothing of the cap set in the Huntsman deal. Nor did he refer to the pending appeal of the Northwest Compact ruling, which was argued last month in the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

EnergySolutions' claim that the two-year-old agreement is no longer in force, "runs completely counter to the commitment they made with Gov. Huntsman," said U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, a Utah Democrat and RID Act co-sponsor along with U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican.

The bill passed the House but has been held up in the Senate over objections by Utah Sen. Bob Bennett.

Both the bill and the lawsuit center on EnergySolutions' efforts to import waste from the cleanup of Italy's dismantled nuclear reactor program. The federal court ruling stripped the Northwest Compact of its authority -- and, through it, the state of Utah's -- over waste going to the Tooele County site.

Huntsman was leveraging the Compact's authority when he announced the March 15, 2007, agreement with EnergySolutions CEO Steve Creamer. It reaffirmed the company would not accept Class B&C waste and that the company would withdraw its plans for a "super cell," a plan to boost capacity by stacking waste 83 feet high rather than the 45-foot level currently permitted.
In exchange, Huntsman agreed not to ask the Northwest Compact to put a disposal cap at the Utah site.

"This is a monumental win for Utahns marking the endgame for the in-migration of other states' radioactive waste," he said at the time.

Vanessa Pierce, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, said Energy Solutions' assertion that the deal is void was an attempt to renege on its commitment. She predicted the company will soon "be back asking for something." " Clive is EnergySolutions' cash cow and they are going to milk it as long as they can," she said.
fahys@sltrib.com

Waste deal -- done and undone

In 2007, then-Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. and EnergySolutions CEO Steve Creamer signed an agreement that the one-mile square low-level radioactive waste site in Tooele County would not be expanded. EnergySolutions now says the deal is 'unnecessary' because of a recent court ruling regarding a regional waste authority.

Critics » Say EnergySolutions is reneging on its commitment and they insist the old agreement against expansion remains in effect.

Supporters » Say the no-expansion deal is void because the court found EnergySolutions is no longer controlled by a regional compact.