Utah Gov. Gary Herbert declared a "monumental win" Monday, after the U.S. Department of Energy scrapped plans to send more trainloads of depleted uranium to Utah so the state has time to determine whether the waste belongs here.
"The Department of Energy has now agreed, after we registered our concerns, that those trains will head elsewhere," said the Republican governor.
Herbert met with Inés Triay, the DOE's assistant secretary for environmental management, for more than an hour Monday while attending the National Governor's Association meeting in Washington.
It was a follow-up to a Dec. 17 telephone discussion between the two when they struck a verbal deal to complete an expedited review of EnergySolutions' Utah site. That deadline ended last week, leaving unanswered when an already sent shipment of DU would be buried and the fate of two more trainloads ready to come to Utah from the government's cleanup of its Savannah River, S.C., bomb-making site.
Herbert said Monday he preferred to "negotiate in person, eyeball to eyeball." He came away from the meeting with Triay's pledge to appear before Utah's Radiation Control Board and explain why her agency believes the DU can be safely disposed of like any other Class A waste.
Class A low-level radioactive waste generally is considered safe for disposal under a protective rock-and-clay cover that would prevent any harmful radiation from escaping. The EnergySolutions Inc. disposal site in Tooele County is the only site open to all but a small percentage of the nation's Class A waste.
But the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year raised questions about how long shallow disposal can be effective, since DU gets more hazardous over time for up to 1 million years. The NRC estimates it will take two more years for its scientists to devise guidelines that every shallow disposal site should be required to meet before it accepts DU.
"The Department of Energy and the State of Utah are both taking steps to examine future options for the disposal of depleted uranium," said Jen Stutsman, an Energy Department spokeswoman, in an e-mail. "The Department is committed to the safe disposition of depleted uranium and will continue to work closely with the state regulators."
Another part of the agreement will allow the Energy Department to play an active role in the waste-containment standards the state radiation board and regulators are currently developing.
"There is a lot of myth and legend out there and rumor," said Herbert, describing the reasons for the DOE's involvement in creating the state's site-performance assessment standards. The agency will "work with us as we go through this assessment of how to store, what would be required to make sure that depleted uranium is stored safely, now and into the future."
The Radiation Board has written a proposed regulation that sets a minimum standard for how long large quantities must be contained. EnergySolutions has said it might be the end of this year before it completes an engineering study of its site's capabilities. It might be another year before the state can sign off on the company's report.
"We welcome the responsible approach outlined by Governor Herbert to ensure that depleted uranium will be safely managed at Clive," said Val Christensen, the company's president and CEO. "We are confident that the performance assessment under way will verify existing data showing that Clive [the disposal site 80 miles west of Salt Lake City] is suitable for permanent disposal of depleted uranium."
Vanessa Pierce, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, praised Herbert's efforts, along with those of concerned citizens, scientists and the radiation board who have played "an active role in safeguarding the health of all Utahns from this dangerous material."
"As the federal government looks to dispose of hundreds of thousands of tons of DU in the long-term Utah is still in the cross-hairs," she added, "and we'll continue to fight to ensure the health and safety of future generations will be protected from this long-lived hazard."
While the environmental group restated its view that the waste does not belong in Utah, Herbert said he would not prejudge the final outcome of the state's review and what happens next will have to be discussed later.
"Who knows," he said, "what the future will bring?"
Just 33 barrels of all 14,800 drums from Savannah River DU have been checked so far for their hazard level. Regulators want to make sure the waste does not contain too much technetium-99, a radioactive fission product that would, if its concentration is too high, be prohibited under state law.
Herbert said if the first 5,000 drums do not meet the state's Class A limits, the Energy Department's Triay agreed "that she will pick up the material and take it out of the state of Utah," as required under a pending state requirement.
Depleted uranium is classified as Class A low-level waste, which, by definition, loses its radiological hazard over a century. The concern with DU is that while it's less radioactive now, over time it becomes more hazardous, peaking in danger after 1 million years. So, is it reasonable for policy makers to focus on its current hazard, its hazard in 10,000 years or later? And what about the possibility -- some scientists insist it's a certainty -- that the Great Salt Lake will someday rise again, breach the Utah disposal site and spread the hazard?
