EnergySolutions proposed three locations for a waste reprocessing facility - none of them in Utah - and all three were selected to receive a share of $16 million in grants to do detailed site studies and environmental work.

"It's a huge opportunity," said Greg Hopkins, spokesman for EnergySolutions. "We believe this technology is going to be the thing that allows us to use nuclear energy in a more substantial way . . . and we want to be in the middle of that."

The Bush administration launched the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership earlier this year, including a return to nuclear fuel reprocessing - a technology aimed at reusing the uranium that powers commercial nuclear plants by extracting the most dangerous radioactive materials.

The United States abandoned reprocessing in 1977 because it creates material that could be used in nuclear weapons. The Energy Department believes new technologies can solve the potential weapons proliferation problem.

Critics of reprocessing also have argued that it is extremely costly, inefficient and leaves dangerous radioactive and toxic byproducts that still need to be disposed of.

"The last time we reprocessed in the United States it was a colossal failure from an economic, safety and environmental standpoint and we're still cleaning up the legacy of that effort," said Vanessa Pierce, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah.

Pierce said reprocessing waste also will create additional low-level radioactive waste that likely would be stored at the EnergySolutions storage site in Clive.

Britain, France, Russia and Japan have reprocessing facilities. Envirocare of Utah acquired a reprocessing technology when it bought British Nuclear Group and formed EnergySolutions earlier this year.

Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon said nuclear power can help meet the need for emissions-free energy, and reprocessing can maximize the benefits of nuclear fuel.

EnergySolutions proposes building the reprocessing plant either at Atomic City, Idaho, near the Idaho National Laboratory; in Roswell, N.M., at an existing hazardous waste site; or in Barnwell, S.C., at a site adjacent to the Energy Department's Savannah River National Laboratory where the government started building a reprocessing plant before abandoning the project.

The Energy Department is looking to build both a reprocessing plant and a new type of reactor that can be powered by reprocessed fuel. Hopkins said that EnergySolutions is initially focused on reprocessing, but has not ruled out competing to build the reactor.