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SALT LAKE CITY -- EnergySolutions wants to dispose of three trainloads of depleted uranium, shipped from South Carolina, in its Tooele County landfill. But critics want to stop it because the waste will get more radioactive over tens of thousands of years.
On Tuesday, the governor ordered state experts to sample the first trainload to make sure the waste is what it's supposed to be. The other two trainloads are on hold in South Carolina to give the Radiation Control Board more time to finish up new regulations
I just don't think that squares with good science or with common sense.
–Stephen Nelson, former Radiation Control Board chairman.
Meanwhile, the former chairman of the Radiation Control Board says EnergySolutions is misleading the public. Geochemist Stephen Nelson says the company falsely portrays its critics as anti-nuclear activists who don't know science.
"Well, I am, in fact, not opposed to nuclear power," Nelson says.
He's also an expert on radioactive isotopes.
"What I am for is the proper disposal of the byproducts of nuclear power," Nelson says.
He says the proper place for depleted uranium is a deep geologic formation, like a New Mexico salt deposit that will entomb the waste for millions of years. The wrong place, he says, is EnergySolutions' shallow landfill.
"I just don't think that squares with good science or with common sense," Nelson says.
He says the company falsely portrays the waste as benign, like natural uranium. In 50,000 years, he says it will be 13 times more radioactive.
Nelson's nightmare scenario is a dramatic rise in the Great Salt Lake. If Lake Bonneville returns, just enough to flood the north end of the Salt Lake Valley, it will also flood the landfill 60 miles to the west.
Nelson says that scenario is likely sometime in the next 100,000 years.
"There's a virtually 100 percent probability," he says.
An aerial photo shows Lake Bonneville once cut a bench 100 feet wide into solid bedrock. The landfill cover of concrete and rock, Nelson says, wouldn't stand a chance of holding radioactive waste in place.
"There's a very good chance that those piles would be very rapidly obliterated," Nelson says.
EnergySolutions responded to Nelson's statements in writing.
"Uranium is commonplace in our lives and is constantly decaying. We have been handling safely depleted uranium for many years in accordance with NRC and Utah regulations. Dr. Nelson's prediction about when and how Lake Bonneville will return within 100,000 years is pure speculation," wrote EnergySolutions President Val Christensen.
Until recently, Nelson says, board members never knew EnergySolutions had been disposing depleted uranium.
"That, essentially, was emplaced under the board's nose," Nelson says.
The Radiation Control Board, which Nelson used to lead, on Tuesday voted down a proposal to extend the public comment period. Many environmentalists welcomed that decision. They hope it means new regulations will be in place more quickly, before two more trainloads head for Utah.
A public hearing is planned Jan. 26, and public comment will close Feb. 2.
E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com
