At a nuclear waste industry meeting, officials say the regional compact needs revamp

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake Tribune LAS VEGAS - Utah has long been the safety valve for states without disposal for radiation-tainted waste.
    Railroad cars hauled all but 5 percent of the nation's low-level radioactive waste last year to the EnergySolutions Inc. disposal site in Tooele County.
    But hospitals, universities and nuclear plants that generate low-level waste are beginning to worry about the long-term outlook for a small fraction of the waste they generate, material that has been outlawed in Utah because it is too radiologically hot.
    Although Congress set up a regional system to deal with this sort of waste two decades ago, many say it doesn't work.
    But representatives of some key states and regions said Thursday they don't want this "regional compact" system scrapped. They want it revitalized.
    Otherwise, said Leonard Slosky, the states that have low-level disposal sites are likely to close down for everyone - even the 14 states, like Utah, with access to full-service disposal sites in South Carolina and Washington State.
    "Compacts are not only important to waste management," said Slosky, director of the Rocky Mountain Interstate Compact on Low-level Radioactive Waste. "Compacts are essential."
    Slosky spoke Thursday at the second annual RadWaste Summit, a three-day meeting of the nuclear waste industry and its regulators that is aimed at providing updates on trends in waste management and brainstorming solutions to its problems.
    The Rocky Mountain Compact has asked a U.S. District Court judge to participate in a lawsuit that pits EnergySolutions against the Northwest Compact. The Northwest Compact operates a low-level waste disposal site in Hanford, Wash., that serves waste generators in Utah and seven other Northwest Compact member states, as well as three states in the Rocky Mountain Compact.
    EnergySolutions says the Northwest Compact has no authority over its privately owned and operated site on a square mile of Tooele County desert.
    The Salt Lake City-based nuclear waste company sought the ruling when the Northwest Compact indicated its 20-year contract with EnergySolutions did not permit cleanup waste from Italy - or any other foreign country - to cross into the compact boundary and buried in the Utah landfill.
    Meanwhile, a disposal option closed this summer for a small portion of the nation's low-level radioactive waste that is blocked from disposal in Utah. Class B and C waste from 36 states has nowhere to go since the Atlantic Compact closed its doors to out-of-compact waste July 1.
    California and Ohio regulators said Thursday they are making do for now. Nuclear power plants, which generate most of this radioactive rubbish, can store their own Class B and C waste on site.
    And universities and hospitals are looking to possible use of federal disposal sites.
    "The advantage is these [federal sites] is that they already exist," said Al Pasternak, who directs an association of public and private organizations that generate low-level radioactive waste.
    Meanwhile, said Slosky, it might take some time for the demand for new disposal to exceed the public opposition to new sites before there will be progress in solving the waste problem.