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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- EnergySolutions, which operates a low-level radioactive disposal site in western Utah, has joined the campaign against a proposal to store depleted nuclear-reactor fuel at the Goshutes' Skull Valley reservation.
The Salt Lake City company formerly known as Envirocare of Utah on Tuesday announced an advertising campaign in which it will criticize the Skull Valley proposal and argue that it has a recycling technology that is a better solution for the used fuel rods.
EnergySolutions bought the rights to the reprocessing technology from a British company in February.
"Recycling is the right thing to do for America and will make the (Private Fuel Storage) proposal for Utah obsolete," said Steve Creamer, EnergySolutions president and chief executive officer.
Last fall, EnergSolutions began buying other nuclear-service companies and now holds contracts to manage nuclear waste at power plants, minimize nuclear waste and clean up contaminated sites.
Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of power utilities with nuclear reactors, won a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate an interim storage facility on the Indian reservation about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
State officials and Utah's congressional delegation and have fought the project. Their attempts to halt it have included creation of a wilderness area in the path of a likely railroad route to the reservation.
PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said, "PFS and its members are potential customers of EnergySolutions, so I think it's odd to oppose us so publicly."
Creamer said, "The utilities that comprise PFS are our friends in the nuclear energy industry. They have a legitimate need to close the fuel cycle by finding a permanent solution to dealing with spent fuel."
The U.S. Department of Energy issued a request last month for parties to submit expressions of interest in a nuclear fuel reprocessing project.
The project, called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Technical Demonstration Program, is to propose and evaluate sites that would be suitable for demonstrating advanced nuclear fuel reprocessing.
"Because EnergySolutions is the only American-owned company with proven recycling technology, we plan to be a major player in the recycling industry," Creamer said. "Our system has over a 30-year track record in England of successfully recycling spent nuclear fuel."
More than 95 percent of spent fuel can be reprocessed and reused, EnergySolutions said.
Martin said recycling could be part of the long-term solution, but it will take years to develop, and PFS's plan to store the waste on the Goshute land is the best short-term solution.
Jason Groenewold, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, called nuclear reprocessing "fool's gold" that has a long history of failing.
He said plutonium has been found in the teeth of children who live near the Sellafield plant in Britain and robots are being used to clean up the most recent operations accident there.
"The only thing that is proven about reprocessing is that it doesn't work," he said. "It creates enormous risk to the public health. It costs an arm and a leg, and it does not solve the disposal problem."
Creamer said the problem at Sellafield was due to improper operations and not poor design.
EnergySolutions said earlier this month that it would not propose the recycling plant for Utah.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
