March 2, 2006

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Credibility Gap: Utah's Politics Not up to Radioactive Challenges
Nuclear Waste Storage
Tribune Editorial
Salt Lake Tribune, UT
March 1, 2006

Geologically and geographically, Utah is arguably a good place to store the detritus of the nuclear age. Politically and administratively, it definitely is not.
   

Until that serious flaw is corrected, the option of opening more of the state to radioactive waste should remain closed.
   

The first step in filling that gap would be for the Legislature to sustain Gov. Jon Huntsman's veto of SB70. That's the bill that would unwisely take away the governor's absolute veto power over any new or expanded radioactive waste sites and instead allow the Legislature to override a veto with a two-thirds majority.
   

The necessity of a strong, transparent and trustworthy regulatory process is illustrated by word, which dribbled out just before the end of the legislative session, that the owners of the Grassy Mountain landfill in Tooele County want a license to store low-level radioactive waste at the facility already approved for other sorts of toxic debris.
   

Nuclear waste, from medicine to the ever-more-attractive option of smog-free nuclear power, is a fact of life. As part of a nationally thought-out and scientifically sound whole, Utah could well have a significant, even profitable, role in that process.
   

But the history of radioactive waste in Utah has not inspired confidence.
   

The former owners of the state's best-known radioactive waste facility, then known as Envirocare, were some years ago embroiled in a particularly slimy corruption scandal that also tarred the state's regulatory process. The company was also known as a generous donor to political campaigns, including the one that defeated a 2002 ballot initiative that would have put tougher limits and higher taxes on the industry.
   

Most of those individuals are now out of the picture. Envirocare has been absorbed into a new outfit called EnergySolutions, which imagines doing much more creative things with nuclear waste than just putting it into expensive holes.
   

But it would be unwise to approve the Grassy Mountain plan, especially as Utah and Nevada work to prevent their states from becoming a dump for the much hotter stuff that comes from spent nuclear fuel rods.
   

Utah needs a skilled, well-funded, scrupulously independent regulatory process, with prohibitions against regulators going to work for the regulated, total transparency in both processes and finances and significant taxes. Only then can we even consider opening our doors to more radioactive waste.