Feb 26 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Judy Fahys The Salt Lake Tribune



EnergySolutions Inc. assured its investors Thursday that trainloads of depleted uranium from a government cleanup in South Carolina will end up in Utah as originally planned -- but the assertion was quickly contradicted by Gov. Gary Herbert's office.

Herbert's spokeswoman says a deal the governor struck Monday with the Department of Energy would keep the two trains of depleted uranium out of the state for good.

"We take the Department of Energy at its word," said spokeswoman Angie Welling. She said the governor remains confident in the agreement "despite the rhetoric from EnergySolutions" that the waste is being detoured only temporarily to Texas,.

EnergySolutions President and CEO Val Christensen was responding to questions from investors on a conference call Thursday when he said that the Energy Department is delaying the shipments, rather than diverting them permanently. He said his company has the state license and the DOE contract to bury the DU from the Savannah River Project cleanup in South Carolina.

"We have been assured by the Department of Energy that the ultimate disposition path is still the Clive facility," he said. DU drums "will be temporarily delayed and stored at the [Waste Control Specialists] facility in Texas until the Utah [DU sampling] program is completed and the shipments can come for final disposition."

The Energy Department did not respond Thursday to a request for comment on the latest twist in the drama

over DU. The department has through the end of the year to spend $22 million in stimulus funds for loading, shipping and storing Savannah River waste.

Earlier this week, Herbert called it "a monumental win" for Utah that DOE had agreed to find a different solution for two trainloads -- filled with about 10,000 drums of DU -- awaiting shipment to Utah from the South Carolina cleanup.

The first trainload of nearly 5,000 drums was already on its way to Utah when Herbert and the Energy Department first agreed to give Utah regulators more time to beef up disposal standards for DU.

The latest agreement, struck during a Washington meeting with Ines Triay, the DOE's assistant secretary for environmental management, extends the time for Utah to analyze the Savannah River waste. It also allows as long as two years to double check the suitability of EnergySolutions' site before any more DU would be allowed there.

During Thursday's conference call with investors, Christensen said that site review will ultimately show there is no problem with using the company's low-level radioactive waste site at Clive, Tooele County, for permanent disposal of large quantities of the low-level radioactive waste.

"It never does, as it's disposed in our cell, exceed Class A waste because of our averaging measurement techniques or, uh, algorithms that are used in the industry," he told analysts.

Previously, the company has said it would be about 35,000 years before the 50,000 tons of DU already at the Tooele County site exceeds Utah's Class A hazard limit for low-level radioactive waste.

One complication with DU is that over time it gets more hazardous, peaking in danger after 1 million years. That means, even though it has a relatively low hazard now, the potential for harm must be a concern for regulators and policy makers concerned with the long term.

Welling, Herbert's spokeswoman, said Christensen's remarks "directly contradict" this week's agreement, which specify that "trains No. 2 and No. 3 will not come to Utah."

Vanessa Pierce, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, backed Herbert's assertions that DU trains from Savannah River have been derailed.

"With his assurance this waste will come to Utah, Christensen is effectively calling Governor Herbert a liar," Pearce said. "DOE needs to set the record straight both for the benefit of Utah, and for the sake of EnergySolutions' shareholders, who might have been sold a bill of goods by the company's CEO."

fahys@sltrib.com

DU: Not ordinary radioactive waste

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. Some scientists warn that the fluctuating Great Salt Lake will someday rise again and could breach the Utah disposal site and spread the hazard.
 

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