The Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management has agreed to allow Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions to dispose of Class A low-level radioactive waste from Ontario, Canada to the company’s Clive, Utah disposal facility.
EnergySolutions got an affirmative vote Friday for its proposal to import the Canadian waste at the Clive facility located in Utah’s West Desert. The waste resulted from electric-power generation, EnergyNorthwest has said.
The result of the Friday meeting, initially postponed from November, was reported Dec. 19 by the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper.
“We appreciate the thorough and thoughtful discussions conducted by the committee prior to its vote,” EnergySolutions said in an emailed statement to Exchange Monitor “The waste approved for disposal is the same types of Class A low-level radioactive waste that the Clive facility has safely and responsibly managed and disposed of for more than 30 years.”
“For more than three decades, EnergySolutions has worked closely with U.S. commercial utilities, state and federal regulators, and communities across the country to ensure the safe, secure, and fully compliant management and disposal of Class A low-level radioactive nuclear waste at its Utah facility,” EnergySolutions went on to say. “This decision reflects our long-standing record of safety.”
A coalition of environmental and anti-nuclear groups had urged the Northwest Compact to reject the proposal saying among other things that regional compacts have rejected imported waste in the past.
“Possibly based on concerns from organizations, the NWIC [Northwest Interstate Compact} voted to require reporting on what companies will be sending their waste to Utah,” the environmental coalition said in a Dec. 22 statement.
“The NWIC also removed any mentions of mixed waste because EnergySolutions (which was allowed to speak at the meeting while the public was not even allowed to text) now states it will not ship hazardous or mixed radioactive and hazardous waste,” the environmental groups said. The groups called the decision “concerning.”