March 17, 2014

UTAH GIVING HARD LOOK TO LIABILITY PACT WITH DOE, ENERGYSOLUTIONS FOR CLIVE FACILITY

By ExchangeMonitor

A proposed tri-party long-term liability agreement for some waste disposed of at EnergySolutions’ Clive facility between Utah, the Department of Energy and the company is getting a hard look by state officials, Utah’s top environmental regulator indicated late last week. Under the proposed agreement, DOE would assume liability for a portion of the waste at Clive. "There is an obvious benefit for the state, and we’ve been interested in it for many years," Amanda Smith, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said at the sixth annual RadWaste Summit, held in Summerlin, Nev. last week. Smith said the agreement is in fairly complete form, and that she has reviewed it. "It’s now with our new Assistant Attorney General," she said. "This is a unique opportunity to move forward with it. Some of the issues are really in the details, and we’re trying to work quickly to figure that out. We have new legal assistance, and that will bring us some new perspective."

Securing such an agreement is viewed as vital before EnergySolutions can accept depleted uranium for disposal and it remains unclear if the state ultimately will be willing to trade the security of federal stewardship for the potential that DU will be disposed of at the site. Frank Marcinowski, deputy assistant secretary for waste management with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, said at the Summit that the agency wants to “move forward [with the agreement] this year so it’s ready when we need it.” EnergySolutions accepted DU until environmental groups in Utah rallied against it in 2009. The company has provided the state with a new performance assessment of Clive that focused on disposing large quantities of the waste, but after more than a year of inactivity Utah’s Division of Radiation Control has not yet issued an RFP for a technical analysis of the study. Smith said, "the depleted uranium issue does make it that much more important, particularly looking at longevity at the site, and how that would be managed. We’d like to see [the long-term stewardship agreement and pursuit of depleted uranium disposal] happen hand in hand.”

Comments are closed.