The Glen Canyon Group of the Sierra Club's nuclear-waste committee recently filed a petition with the Utah Division of Radiation Control to stop the waste coming from FMRI Inc., in Muskogee, Okla., into Utah.

The waste would be shipped to the International Uranium Corp.'s mill on White Mesa, a sparsely populated plateau in southeastern Utah. Earlier this month, the DRC granted an amendment request by the mill's owners to accept the new waste, which the DRC calls "alternate feed material."

"I know there are people on White Mesa who are concerned about various health problems," said Sarah Fields, chairwoman of the Glen Canyon Group's nuclear-waste committee.

One of the fears about the waste from FMRI Inc. is over thorium, found naturally in the earth's crust and contained in the waste from Oklahoma. As thorium decays, it produces the radioactive gas radon. The concern about radon is that it could cause lung cancer in humans.

In a hearing last January in front of the DRC, Thelma Whiskers, a Ute Indian, asked the DRC to move the mill to protect Utes living nearby from getting sick. She says activity at the mill, which has been in operation for more than 20 years, is making people ill.

"So I wish you people would listen to me," Whiskers said. "We don't want it to be close to the Ute Reservation."

The Glen Canyon Group's petition calls for a new adjudicative-type hearing that would include lawyers for all parties. The group also wants the meeting to be open to the public and held in Blanding, located about four miles from the mill. Normally such a hearing is held in Salt Lake City.

The DRC previously listened to public comment about the mill's amendment during a public hearing Jan. 5 in Blanding.

Dane Finerfrock, DRC director, said in that hearing he addressed public concerns about dangerous chemicals in the waste and radon. As of this week, he is still satisfied with the amendment request.

"Is it a done deal? No." Finerfrock said in a phone interview. "That's why we're going through the appeals process.

"We believe the tailings (waste) can be disposed of by IUC safely," he added.

For more than 10 years, the mill has received hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive waste from at least four states and parts of Canada. Each time waste is accepted from a source not listed in IUC's license, an amendment to the mill's license is required.

Out of 18 previous requests for amendments to the mill's license, allowing it to receive, store and process waste from various sites, there have been requests for 23 hearings to voice opposition to the amendments. Four hearings were granted, yet all 18 amendments were approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

The recent petition asks the Utah Radiation Control Board to invalidate the DRC's decision permitting the mill to receive the waste from Oklahoma. In 2004 the NRC gave up oversight of uranium mills to the state.

The Radiation Control Board is scheduled to meet Aug. 4 in Salt Lake City. Board members will decide then whether to grant the request for another hearing in Blanding that will include attorneys.

A lawyer for the Glen Canyon Group said the White Mesa mill is only supposed to process and dispose of natural uranium ore. Accepting waste from Oklahoma would turn the mill into a "dump for the metal manufacturing industry's radioactive trash," attorney Travis Stills said in a press release.

FMRI Inc. is a subsidiary of Fansteel, which until 1989 operated a "rare metal extraction" facility at its Muskogee site. Fansteel eventually filed for bankruptcy, and in 2003, FMRI was set up to decommission Fansteel's Muskogee facility and coordinate a $30-million project to clean up the site, where there is still leftover ore, or waste, that is valued for its uranium content.

The White Mesa mill would extract the uranium from material transported from Oklahoma and store the remaining waste in cells, which are lined retention ponds that are usually dry.

The mill and its storage cells are on private land, surrounded by Indian reservation and land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.

More than 4,000 people live within 10 miles of the mill, and more than 21,000 live within 50 miles. More than half the population of San Juan County is Native American, which includes Navajo Indians and members of the White Mesa band of the Ute Mountain Indians, one of three tribes that make up the Ute Indian Tribe.

E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com