Waste from Germany won't come to Utah site

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EnergySolutions Inc. has asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to import low-level radioactive waste from Germany.

But — in contrast to the Salt Lake City company's controversial request to import waste from Italy three years ago — this time EnergySolutions is proposing to send back any ash left over after the waste is burned in the company's Oak Ridge, Tenn., incinerator instead of disposing of it at the company's Tooele County landfill.

"Nothing comes to Clive," Dale Didion, the company's chief communications officer, said Wednesday.

The import-export license, if granted by federal regulators, would allow EnergySolutions to take 1,000 tons of waste from several German universities and hospitals, incinerate it and return the resulting ash. It's what Didion calls a "burn-and-return" contract.

The move reflects the company's decision last summer to abandon plans to bury foreign-generated waste permanently at the Tooele County low-level radioactive waste landfill. It's 2007 effort to dispose of 1,600 tons imported from Italy's decommissioned nuclear-reactor facilities caused a public uproar and triggered federal legislation co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to outlaw foreign waste imports.

It also prompted EnergySolutions' federal lawsuit to establish its right that such imports were allowed at the Utah site. But a federal appeals court rejected that claim last month, and the company has said it would not pursue the case further.

Matheson said Wednesday that EnergySolutions' latest request should remind Congress that the issue of the United States becoming a disposal ground for foreign waste remains unresolved and that the Senate should join the House in passing the bill. He said the company "cannot definitively show that foreign and domestic waste streams aren't mixed together during processing" and foreign waste still could wind up in Utah.

"This underscores the need for my bill to prohibit the importation of foreign radioactive waste and not leave it up to individual business decisions," the Utah Democrat said. "There is still time for the Senate to pass HR515 this year."

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, also is a co-sponsor of the bill.

fahys@sltrib.com —