Federal regulators want the public to have a seat or two at the roundtable they are planning in Salt Lake City to talk about depleted uranium.
Along with a similar forum Sept. 2-3 in Maryland, the Sept. 23-24 meeting in Utah is part of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's effort to determine whether large amounts of depleted uranium belong in shallow disposal sites like the EnergySolutions landfill in Tooele County.
"It's a dialogue," said Ivonne Couret, an NRC spokeswoman, noting that the commission wants to hear from a variety of stakeholders.
The NRC meetings come at a time when Utah's Radiation Control Board is considering a temporary moratorium on depleted uranium, a by-product of uranium enrichment that has the unusual quality of getting more hazardous over time. But the NRC's review is expected to take years, and the state wants to do "due diligence" before a large volume of the waste is allowed to go the EnergySolutions disposal site.
EnergySolutions already has buried about 49,000 tons of depleted uranium at its low-level radioactive waste site 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. The company also is a likely candidate for up to 1.4 million tons of waste, half stockpiled from federal enrichment programs and the other half anticipated from two commercial facilities that the NRC already has approved.
The NRC reaffirmed in March that depleted uranium is "Class A" material, the type of low-level radioactive waste EnergySolutions is permitted to accept. But federal regulators are double-checking those standards to make sure large volumes can be buried in specific locations safely in light of the unique hazards of depleted uranium.
EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said Wednesday: "We really look forward to the workshop."
Vanessa Pierce, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, said the decision to study depleted uranium again is a sign that even the NRC recognizes that it's a "different animal." It also underscores why Utah should impose the moratorium until the NRC has finished its work.
"It's prudent to put a halt to [depleted uranium disposal] while this process is underway," she said.
Peter Jenkins, a health physicist and chairman of the state radiation board, noted that the NRC is asking how much depleted uranium should be considered safe in a shallow landfill, how long should the safety of the site be guaranteed and whether current scientific data is sufficient to decide safety questions.
"They are asking some of the same questions we are," he said. "They're all questions we need to answer."
 

Find out about topics and taking part
More information on participating in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's depleted uranium roundtable, including a complete listing of the questions being considered, is published in Wednesday's Federal Register: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-14820.pdf