Apr 11 - Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

By Stephen Speckman Deseret News

In an uncommon move this week the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued what it calls a "fact sheet" on EnergySolutions' application to import low-level radioactive waste from Italy.

NRC spokesman David McIntyre said release of the document was due to an outpouring of interest that includes members of Congress. The public comment period on the issue was recently extended to June 10.

"We have received an unusually high number of comments on this application," McIntyre said. There are over 900 comments, "overwhelmingly against" EnergySolutions' proposal.

EnergySolutions wants to import up to 20,000 tons of contaminated materials from decommissioned nuclear facilities in Italy. Most of the materials would be recycled in Tennessee and less than 1,600 tons of what's left over would be shipped to Clive, Tooele County, for disposal at an EnergySolutions dump site.

EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker would only say Thursday that the new NRC document is part of the process. His company will continue to follow the guidelines of the process until a decision about its license is made.

McIntyre said one of the main questions the NRC answered in an April 9 letter to Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., comes down to whether EnergySolutions is properly licensed in each state to do what they're proposing.

"Both Tennessee and Utah have said 'yes' to that," McIntyre said.

The gist of this week's letter to Gordon described the NRC's role as regulatory, to ensure that the import process can be done safely and securely under state and federal laws, McIntyre said.

Last month Gordon and fellow House Energy and Commerce Committee members Reps. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., sponsored legislation that would ban import of nuclear waste unless it was originally produced in the U.S. An exception would be U.S. military waste generated abroad.

According to the NRC's fact sheet, the Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act places the responsibility of regulating access to low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities on individual states. The document goes on to say that the NRC will consult with all affected states before it grants the license to import the waste.

The NRC still expects to hear from the eight member states of the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management, which McIntyre said is scheduled to meet in May to discuss the application. There may also be an adjudicatory hearing for the Atomic Safety Board's chance to weigh in on the matter.

Utah's own advisory Radiation Control Board wrote a letter to the NRC opposing the import proposal. Gov. Jon Hunstman Jr. penned a cover letter to the NRC urging it to be the deciding agency on whether portions of the "finite" amount of this country's disposal space for radioactive material should be set aside for importing waste from other countries.

If EnergySolutions can clear all of the hurdles currently in its way, it could begin importing waste from Italy as soon as August. To critics of the proposal, the NRC's fact sheet this week has only added fuel to a growing opposition movement.

"Though it may contain useful information, people should not take issuance of a fact sheet to mean the license application will be opposed by the NRC," Friends of the Earth's Tom Clements said Thursday. "Pressure should be kept up to stop the license and prevent Tennessee, Utah and the nation from becoming an international nuclear waste dumping ground."

E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com

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