The head of the nation’s nuclear-regulation agency said Monday that long-term public health and safety — not the nuclear industry’s agenda — are driving decisions on the radioactive waste allowed in Utah.

“Our staff’s focus is 100 percent on safety,” said Gregory B. Jaczko, who was in Salt Lake City to address the Health Physics Society annual meeting.

The NRC must look at the technical questions, the science and the law as it determines if the EnergySolutions site is the right place to bury forever unusual forms of low-level radioactive waste, including depleted uranium and blended waste being generated by the tons.

“People are proposing to dispose of it. We have to figure out how it can be safely disposed of, or if it can be safely disposed of,” he said later in the day in a meeting with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board.

Jaczko’s visit to Utah came at a time when nearly 1,200 radiation-safety experts from government, business and academia met to discuss the future of the nuclear industry and technical issues in the field.

It also coincided with a contentious discussion about disposal at the specialized EnergySolutions landfill in Tooele County, a mile-square site 75 miles from Salt Lake City that is the sole option for low-level radioactive waste from government cleanup sites and nuclear power plants in 36 states.

The Salt Lake City-based nuclear services company, backed by its customers in the nuclear industry and at the U.S. Energy Department, wants clarification on the restrictions for DU, enrichment waste that becomes more hazardous over time, and down-blended waste, mixtures of more hazardous forms of low-level waste and less-hazardous material designed to get around Utah’s legal restrictions.

On DU, the NRC is proposing additional measures that need to be taken to make sure that an intruder who builds a home on the site thousands of years in the future, when its output of cancer-causing radon accelerates, will not be exposed to excessive radiation. Those federal performance-assessment standards are expected in 2012.

On blended waste, it will probably be a few months before the NRC decides whether or not it will change its current guidelines, Jaczko said Monday. He described blended waste as being no different than combining tea of various strengths, but he also acknowledged that it is uncertain now whether blended waste will settle someday into “hotspots” of too-hazardous waste.

EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said Monday the problem of hotspots has been solved by the industry and is no more than a red herring being used by a waste-processing competitor, a company called Studsvik.

“This issue has been raised by Studsvik to try and make issue of blending to compete for business,” he said But, for Utah officials, the NRC’s handling of DU and down-blending can be summed up in the adage, too little, too late.

State regulators, the Radiation Control Board and Gov. Gary Herbert have objected to blending when it’s done to change the waste’s classification, thus circumventing Utah’s five-year-old ban on Class B and C waste. There currently is no licensed disposal for B and C waste generated in 36 states.

DEQ Director Amanda Smith said the state would like the NRC to develop a rule on blending to help clarify the health and safety issues, among others. But, meanwhile, the state is exploring its own regulation to address the safety of the Utah site for “unique waste streams” like blended waste.

And, with more DU already headed to Utah as the NRC crafts long-term site performance guidelines, the state has put a hold on any additional DU — there are already 49,000 tons buried at EnergySolutions — until state regulators have reviewed and approved a state site-performance assessment.