Radiological waste war dominates board meeting

Environment » Competition from inside and outside the state as EnergySolutions and other companies scrap for turf.

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 02/09/2010 09:38:43 PM MST

The ferocious competition in the nation's radioactive waste business burst into full display Tuesday at a Utah Radiation Control Board meeting.

First, panel members heard about a plans for a new disposal site in Tooele County, not far from where Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions Inc. operates a landfill that accepts about 98 percent of the nation's low-level radioactive waste.

The board then heard two EnergySolutions' competitors tell why the state should bar "downblending," a limited industry practice that allows hotter Class B & C waste to be mixed with the Class A waste permitted in Utah so that the waste does not have to be stored.

With the only disposal site open to waste from 36 states, EnergySolutions had nothing to say about the first proposal, but it challenged Studesvik Inc. and Waste Control Specialists LLC for telling board members they reject downblending.

"They've got to base [their decision] on the facts and base it on the science," said EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker.
The board has had a subcommittee looking at a state regulation on downblending for a month. The panel is expected to come forward with a recommendation about whether Utah should try to regulate it by the board's April 13 meeting.

Waste Control Specialists owns the first new low-level radioactive waste disposal site in the United States since the EnergySolutions site was created in 1989. Studesvik operates a radioactive waste processing plant in Tennessee that competes with another plant in that state owned by EnergySolutions.

William P. Dornsife, Waste Control Specialists vice president for regulatory affairs, told the radiation board that EnergySolutions was not designed to manage downblended waste. He added his company's new site in Texas might not have enough business to sustain itself if EnergySolutions is allowed to downblend and capture some of the Class B & C waste the Texas site is licensed to accept.

For nearly two years, there has been no disposal for B & C waste from 36 states, and the arguments about downblending are also going on at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington.

"That waste is important to our viability," Dornsife said.
Ultimately board members said, their decision will be based on health and safety, not competition.

Charles Judd, who helped establish the Tooele County site, said more U.S. disposal capacity is needed for low-level waste. He told the panel he's looking at a site just north of the EnergySolutions facility for a new site, possibly on state school trust lands.

"We are in the very initial stages of this," he said, adding the Texas site took 15 years to license and has yet to open.
Judd has a case pending before the state Supreme Court over his foiled attempt to establish a similar site a few years ago.

fahys@sltrib.com

The fight over radioactive waste

Class A waste should, by definition, lose its radiological hazard in 100 years.

Class B and C wastes are not presumed to lose their radiological hazard for 300 and 500 years, respectively.

Utah banned Class B and C wastes in 2005. Now only 11 states have access to B and C disposal, and that waste is in storage until regulations on downblending become more liberal or a new Texas disposal site is opened to B and C waste with nowhere else to go.