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Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. on Wednesday vaulted to the front lines of a national fight against foreign nuclear waste.
Utah has been the main battleground since Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions applied for a license last fall to dispose of the radioactive discards from Italy's dismantled reactors. The Republican governor has said for months that a waste-limiting agreement he signed with the company last year blocked him from interfering with its plan to bury the Italian waste at its Tooele County disposal site.
That changed Wednesday, when Huntsman said he would use Utah's vote in a regional nuclear waste council to do what federal law does not: stop the disposal of foreign radioactive waste in the United States. Without Utah's "yes" vote, EnergySolutions cannot get a federal license to bring the Italy waste into the United States.
"As I have always emphatically declared," Huntsman said, "Utah should not be the world's dumping ground.
"Our country has limited space to store even domestic waste and it would be most appropriate to have a federal policy against the importation of foreign nuclear waste," he added. "However, as the federal government is slow to adopt such a policy, Utah will lead the way."
EnergySolutions said it was "deeply disappointed" with the governor's move.
"We will continue to pursue the Italian clean-up project, which involves the routine disposal of a very small amount of low level material as part of a clean-up and recycling project that will benefit our Earth's environment," said John Ward, a company spokesman.
But Huntsman, who has been sharply criticized for inaction on the Italy waste issue, also enlisted some high-profile support. U.S. Reps. Bart Gordon, of Tennessee, and Jim Matheson, of Utah, both Democrats, said they would pursue a congressional ban on future disposal of foreign nuclear waste.
"It's not a partisan issue, but rather about doing what's right for Utah and for America," said Matheson.
Like Matheson, Gordon praised the Utah governor. And both acknowledged that blocking the Italy waste is only a temporary solution to a national problem that requires a national solution for the long term.
"I don't want to see the United States become the world's nuclear dumping ground, but that could happen without action," Gordon said, noting that many other countries would like the United States to deal with nuclear waste for which they have no disposal of their own. "That might be a good deal for them, but that plan is simply not in the best interest of the United States."
Huntsman said he will direct Utah's representative to the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-level Radioactive Waste to use the state's vote to help block the importation of foreign waste at EnergySolutions' Utah disposal site, the nation's largest and soon-to-be the only disposal option for waste from 36 states.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the import-license request and has received more than 1,000 comments objecting to the EnergySolutions plan. Now that the Northwest Compact appears almost certain to lodge its objections, the NRC has grounds to reject the import license.
EnergySolutions asked for the license in September. If granted, the company would ship 20,000 tons of low-level waste from the cleanup of Italy's commercial reactor program. The company wants to process that material at a specialized EnergySolutions plant in Tennessee, then dispose of the remaining 1,600 tons at the company's low-level radioactive waste landfill in Tooele County.
EnergySolutions has pointed out that similar imports have been going on for years and that this shipment would have a tiny impact on overall U.S. capacity for radioactive waste disposal.
Vanessa Pierce, of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, praised Huntsman's action.
"He picked the public interest over special interest," she said.
* Federal law gave regional groups called "compacts" authority over all of the low-level radioactive waste going in and out of member states.
* The Northwest Compact has eight member states. Utah joined in 1982.
* Compact members are expected to hear EnergySolutions' request on Italian waste May 8.