Energy Solutions' Italian job
13 May 2008
A deal to recycle radioactive waste from Italy at US facilities has led to deep controversy. Interstate administrators are seeking to block the project, while the company involved wants the courts to overrule them.
The contract involves the import of low-level radioactive waste from decommissioned nuclear facilities in Italy for processing and recycling into shielding blocks for use at other nuclear plants. This work is to be carried out by Energy Solutions, which will also dispose of some remaining material that cannot be recycled. The concept of radioactive waste from overseas being stored indefinitely at Energy Solutions's Clive, Utah disposal facility has angered administrators and politicians in eight US states and led to a lawsuit.
The facility at Clive in Utah is privately owned and operated by Energy Solutions, as are its recycling and processing facilities at Bear Creek, Tennessee. However, under US legislation low-level radioactive waste disposal is the responsibility of individual states, which have formed 'compacts' to operate a smaller number of disposal facilities for all the states in a given compact. The states then regulate access to low-level waste disposal facilities. Utah belongs to the Northwest Interstate Compact, along with Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
Following an appeal from John Huntsman, governor of Utah, the compact committee members voted unanimously on 8 May to block the disposal of overseas waste in Utah. The committee asserted that no arrangement exists between it and Energy Solutions for this type of work, and one would have to be worked out.
Now, Energy Solutions has asked for a 'declaratory judgement action' in the US District Court on whether the compact has any authority over the Clive facility. The company says: he private facility was not created by the compact and is not a regional facility; the US Constitution does not allow the compact to discriminate between domestic and identical foreign materials; and any effort by the compact to restrict international waste movements is pre-empted by federal statutes and regulations.
The proposed project
Energy Solutions said the wastes involved in the deal amount to 20,000 tonnes, about one third of which is metal which would be reformed into blocks to shield radiation. The remainder (materials such as lightly contaminated filters, gloves, plastic equipment etc), would be reduced in volume by a factor of 200 and stored at Clive, according to the company.
A licence application is pending with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the import of the material, which would be checked for compliance before leaving Italy, while a similar licence was granted in 2006 and Bear Creek has been processing foreign wastes "for over 12 years."
The radiation control and public health administrators of Tennessee and Utah have both written to the NRC to say they find no technical problems with the potential import. The NRC will accept public comments on the licence application until 10 June.
In its project factsheet Energy Solutions asserts: "Clive has enough capacity to dispose of all of the low-level radioactive waste from the eventual decommissioning of the 104 US nuclear reactors and still have abundant capacity, over 50 million cubic feet (~1.4 million cubic meters)."