"Nuclear whack-a-mole"

Last week, attorneys for the state of Utah joined the fray against nuclear-waste disposal company EnergySolutions by filing an appeal against a ruling that would allow the company to import foreign nuclear waste to the state. 

EnergySolutions, a Salt Lake City-based company that disposes of low-level radioactive waste from other states, has been in talks to import up to 20,000 tons of nuclear waste from Italy, a proposal that alarmed both citizens and the state government. 

“No country in the world imports another country’s nuclear waste," says Vanessa Pierce, executive director of HEAL Utah, a nonprofit grassroots organization that has gotten into the habit of watchdogging EnergySolutions. "If you have the technical capability to generate the waste, you have the technical capability and the moral obligation to dispose it.”

In May, a federal court ruled that EnergySolutions falls outside the regulatory oversight of the Northwest Compact, an eight-state coalition that oversees low-level radioactive-waste management. The ruling cleared the way for the company to dispose of foreign waste, and last week attorneys for Utah, the Northwest Compact and the three-state Rocky Mountain Compact filed an appeal against the decision.

"[The ruling] would encourage non-compact states to continue to send their radioactive waste, without restriction, to a host state like Utah," the state said in its initial arguments at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Members of Congress have submitted bills in both Houses this year against importing foreign nuclear waste. 

The issue of radioactive waste has been a sore spot for Utahns since the 1950s, when Utah was downwind from the Nevada atmospheric nuclear test sites. Many Utahns feel that their state has long been treated as a dumping ground for other states' waste. 

"We don't produce this waste, we as a state get nothing from importing it," Pierce says. "Why should we have the risk of importing that (here) ... this is a part of the history of our state that has taken the lives of loved ones."

HEAL Utah has been at odds with EnergySolutions (formerly known as EnviroCare) since 2000, when the nuclear waste company wanted to import hotter classes of nuclear waste into the state. The company had been accepting class A nuclear waste, which decays to a stable state within 100 years, and wanted to accept classes B and C, which take between 300 and 500 years to stabilize. Over the years, the company has also submitted proposals to double the size of its waste facility, both horizontally and vertically, Pierce says.

“It’s like playing nuclear whack-a-mole with them,” she adds. “We’re not trying to shut them down, but let’s not turn any more of our Western desert into a toxic nuclear waste dump.”