Utahns rejoiced a few weeks ago when Washington announced stimulus money would be used to speed the removal of a massive pile of uranium-contaminated mill tailings near Moab.
What wasn't publicized at the time is that still more of the $6 billion in Energy Department Recovery Act funds will come to Utah in the form of low-level radioactive waste.
Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions Inc. is specifically named in more than half of the project proposals for the Energy Department stimulus money. And trainloads of waste contaminated with low-level radioactive and hazardous waste will be coming to Utah under the two dozen cleanup projects.
Company Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steve Creamer recently told investors that his nuclear waste company campaigned to be included.
"We have a full team that's doing nothing but working on the stimulus package," Creamer said in a May 7 conference call.
He told investors his staff is helping contractors figure out how to spend the money.
"We're pleased with it," he added, "and we think it's a very positive thing for the company."
EnergySolutions has long touted the value of the Utah disposal site, a mile-square facility that offers the only commercial disposal available for waste from 36 states.
Its federal contracts with the departments of Defense and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency used to account for about half of the waste going to the 20-year-old company, which had rates so low that even government-owned and -operated disposal sites could not compete.
But the volumes headed for EnergySolutions have fallen off in the last couple of years, and the company has turned to such proposals as accepting waste from foreign nations.
The stimulus money projects that specifically mention the Utah company include the large government cleanups of the nation's nuclear-weapons complex in Hanford, Wash., Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Savannah River, S.C.
But the specifics of many stimulus projects still haven't been worked out, said Energy Department spokeswoman Jen Stutsman.
"...[T]here is not yet detailed waste forecast information on the incremental volumes of low-level and mixed low-level waste that may be suitable for disposal at the Clive facility in Utah," she said.
But, even before the stimulus bonanza, EnergySolutions was counting on lots of waste from the Energy Department sites nationwide -- about 52,000 cubic feet this year and 26,000 cubic feet in the next two years, according to Stutsman.
Stimulus-funded projects will add to that volume, but there is no way of saying how much, she said.
The additional cleanup funding is also good news for the cleanups.
At the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, an infusion of $42 million will allow the demolition of buildings associated with a nuclear research reactor and the removal of contaminated soil and pipes. About 6,000 cubic yards of waste -- including contaminated soil, concrete and debris -- will come to Utah by rail, according to Brookhaven spokeswoman Mona Rowe.
At the Savannah River Project, an additional $1.6 billion from the stimulus is slated for cleanup, including the disposal of 16,000 containers of depleted uranium oxide. And, while the Savannah River cleanup sent 5,500 containers of depleted uranium to Utah last fall, spokeswoman Paivi M. Nettamo said where the remaining thousands of containers will go is not certain.
"We will ensure all shipments of depleted uranium oxide or any other radioactive material from [the cleanup] meet all applicable state and federal regulations," she said.
Depleted uranium has become controversial in Utah recently because of the radioactive metal's unusual quality of becoming more hazardous over time. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is looking at the issue but isn't expected to finish its study until after the stimulus money is spent.
