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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — State regulators on Monday cited a number of concerns they need resolved before approving a plan to bury in Utah's western desert a type of nuclear waste that grows more radioactive over a million years.
The Utah Department of Environmental Quality released a 250-page report Monday that examines a plan from Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions to store depleted uranium at its site about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. The company said its plan would allow for it to safely bury the waste in a way that weathers changes in climate, civilization and other disruptions.
The state report highlights eight areas where regulators say EnergySolutions hasn't answered enough questions about how the storage site will hold up in various scenarios, including large-scale geologic changes to the planet.
State officials had begun accepting public comment on the plan through May and may reconsider their conclusions based on that feedback. The division will also hold public meetings in Tooele and Salt Lake City in May.
But those plans may be on hold after Energy Solutions said late Monday they are asking the state put public comment period on hold while the company addresses the state's concerns outlined in the report.
The company said in an emailed statement it's confident it can resolve the issues but doesn't want the public to begin weighing until they make the fixes. The company says it won't proceed until science can determine if deplete uranium can be safely disposed at the site.
Rusty Lundberg, the director of the state Division of Radiation Control, would make the final decision on whether or not to allow the plan to move forward.
EnergySolutions operates a square-mile nuclear waste treatment and disposal facility in the Utah's desert, where other low-level waste has been stored in the area for 30 years.
The low-level waste that's already stored in Utah becomes significantly less radioactive over a few hundred years.
Depleted uranium is initially less radioactive than that waste but grows more radioactive over time because the material it produces when it decays is unstable. That material, which emits radiation, reproduces until it eventually becomes stable after billions of years.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process used for nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.
EnergySolutions is looking to bring up to 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium to Utah from federal facilities where it's been stored temporarily, mostly in Kentucky and Ohio.
The company already brought 3,577 metric tons of the product to Utah in 2009 from South Carolina before state officials halted the process and called for further study. That material is being housed at the company's western Utah site.
Under the plan, the uranium would be stored about 15 to 20 feet underground on top of a two-foot layer of clay. The uranium would be stored in containers stacked in a single or double layer.
It includes layers and barriers designed to protect against runoff, erosion, frost, and the release of radon gas. It will be topped with layers of concrete and other non-radioactive waste, forming a mound about 40 feet above ground level.
Helge Gabert, a project manager with the Department of Environmental Quality, said one of the key concerns is the possibility of a vast lake again forming over the area tens of thousands of years from now and whether enough sediment will be built up to cover the site.
Gabert said he thinks it's possible that regulators and EnergySolutions could resolve many of the concerns by answering some of those hypotheticals as best they can, but public comment will still play a big role in the decision.
While the Monday report from Utah's Department of Environmental Quality doesn't make a final conclusion about the plan, some environmental groups said they're hopeful about the state's response.
Matt Pacenza, the executive director of HEAL Utah, said after reading the state report that he's optimistic that regulators may lean toward rejecting the plan.
"You can't possibly take waste that's dangerous for two million years," Pacenza said, "if you have a whole host of unanswered questions and huge gaps in scientific knowledge."
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