The sale of Envirocare of Utah, the burial mound for hazardous and nuclear wastes in Tooele County, has opened the way for the Legislature to slam the door on hotter wastes. The new owners have taken steps to give up the firm's license to accept class B and C low-level radioactive wastes, which are hotter than the class A wastes the facility currently entombs.

That license for B and C wastes has never taken effect, because under Utah law, the governor and the Legislature must first give their approval.

Because the new owners say they do not seek those hotter wastes, now is the ideal time for the state's political leaders to ban them outright, as they should have done years ago.

Senate Bill 24, sponsored by Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, would prohibit any facility in the state from accepting B or C waste, or other radioactive waste with a higher radionuclide concentration than is allowed under existing licenses.

In addition, it would place in law several recommendations of the Legislature's hazardous waste task force. Among them, it would give the state's Radiation Control Board broader power to review whether an existing fund is adequate to ensure closure and perpetual maintenance of commercial radioactive waste treatment and disposal facilities in the state.

Ideally, the state's political leaders would have done these things years ago. Goodness knows they had the opportunities.

But they repeatedly failed, either because they were not convinced that hotter low-level radioactive wastes posed a significant threat to the environment, the public health and the image of the state, or they could not resist the blandishments of Khosrow Semnani, Envirocare's founder and previous owner. Perhaps lawmakers were convinced the 400 jobs Envirocare brought to Tooele County, and the firm's 20 percent contribution to the county's general fund revenues, outweighed any risks. Maybe it was all three.

Not even the electorate could be convinced to ban B and C wastes when Initiative 1 gave them the chance in 2002.

All of which is another way of saying that the politics of nuclear waste is as radioactive as the contaminated refuse itself.

The history of Envirocare is a history of surprises. So we won't say all is well until the Legislature passes SB24 and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s signature is dry on the enrolled copy of the bill.