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SALT LAKE CITY -- EnergySolutions is on the defensive after its top company official made some claims about the safety of its radioactive waste.
A group fighting EnergySolutions, Healthy Environment Alliance (HEAL) of Utah, is asking state officials to look into claims about the company's nuclear waste.
HEAL Utah says EnergySolutions is making public claims that imply the waste is safer than it really is. For example, a state senator asked EnergySolutions CEO Steve Creamer if the company's nuclear waste was safe enough to use in a garden. He said it probably was.
Company spokeswoman Jill Segal says Creamer did not mean right now.
"Everybody who is in this business, including the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) knows just by definition that class A material, the radioactive material, dissipates over 100 years. Of course he did not mean in 2009. He was just using it as an illustration to describe this material," she said.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports a lobbyist suggested the waste is safe enough to eat. HEAL Utah's executive director, Vanessa Pierce, says Creamer told the Deseret News that in 100 years the EnergySolutions site would be clean enough for people to build homes and grow potatoes there.
"We feel that it's dangerous for the company to be downplaying the danger of the waste they take in such a flippant way," Pierce said.
She says she has asked the state's radiation control board to take up the issue at its meeting tomorrow.
"We just felt like it was time to have the state speak up and say look, you can't grow food at a nuclear waste dump site, even 100 years from now," she said.
But Sigal says everything EnergySolutions does is safe.
"I'm sure there are times people who disagree with us like to take comments out of context," she said.
"EnergySolutions is the world leader in the safe handling and management of this material. We pride ourselves in safety first," she added.
Sigal also noted that EnergySolutions also spends time cleaning up the environment.
"EnergySolutions is the company responsible for cleaning up the mill tailings in Moab, Utah. We are at a lot of Department of Energy sites cleaning up the environment. That's a huge part of what we do and people don't tend to report on that part," she said.
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
