Blended waste? Feds punt decision to Utah

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It's now up to Utah whether big shipments of blended radioactive waste can be buried in the state.

That's the gist of a ruling this week by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a decision applauded by a regulator, an environmental watchdog group and EnergySolutions, the company that wants to bury blended waste at its Tooele County disposal site.

Utah Radiation Control Board Chairman Peter Jenkins, a health physicist, called the NRC's decision on blending "a good sign."

"The NRC recognizes," he said, "the one-size-fits-all classification system is not suitable for all waste sites."

Ultimately, the NRC will update its own regulations on blending. But that could take a few years.

Until then, the Utah Radiation Control Division is free to move forward with state rules for engineering studies that analyze how well EnergySolutions' mile-square site can contain unusual types of waste — like blended waste — on a case-by-case basis.

The Radiation Control Board is seeking public comments on its proposed rules for these reviews.

"It's an opportunity to participate and to make comments before we go out to a formal rule-making process," said Rusty Lundberg, director of the Utah Radiation Control Division.

State and federal regulators are grappling with gaps in the nation's system for dealing with low-level radioactive waste, most of it from radiation-contaminated cleanups and rubbish from the nuclear industry. The current system did not anticipate the special concerns presented by unusual types of waste, such as depleted uranium and blended waste.

Blending waste involves mixing higher- and lower-concentration waste. It's seen as an important option for the nuclear industry, which lost its primary disposal site for Class B waste (which remains hazardous for up to 300 years) and Class C waste (which remains hazardous for up to 500 years) when a South Carolina landfill closed in 2008.

EnergySolutions is testing a process to homogenize resins from nuclear power plants so that the resulting blend has low enough concentrations to meet Utah's current Class A limit for waste that is hazardous up to 100 years.

It would help solve the industry's disposal crunch, and it would give EnergySolutions a new business line.

But the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL) has challenged the safety of blending, and state regulators have questioned the principle of using blending to get around a state ban on Class B and C wastes.

EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said the company was pleased with the NRC decision to revise current rules to focus on site-by-site risks.

"This decision does not affect our operations at this time because we are not doing large-scale blending," he wrote in an e-mail. "If large-scale blending were to become a part of our business model, we would operate in compliance with NRC rules."

HEAL's Christopher Thomas said the ruling gives Utah a choice: Increase the radioactivity on the state's roads and rails by 300 percent every year or preserve its ban on hotter Class B and C materials by keeping out blended waste.

"Governor [Gary] Herbert said he's opposed to blended nuclear waste," Thomas wrote in an e-mail, "but now is the time for action."

The state might need to adjust its blending standards once the federal government finalizes its rules. Both are expected to contain similar elements.

fahys@sltrib.com —