(This is the second section of a two-part article - Please read Part 1 before reading this post.)
EnergySolutions (ES) is a company that focuses on nuclear waste recycling, nuclear waste disposal, and environmental remediation. ES operates the Clive landfill 80 miles west of Salt Lake City in Utah.
ES has been asking the state of Utah for permission to bury three hundred and seventy five thousand tons (or about one half) of the U.S. stockpile of depleted uranium in the Clive landfill. The Utah Department of Environmental Quality listed eight conditions that they say ES must satisfy before they are allowed to ship hundreds of thousands of drums of nuclear waste to Utah for burial. They also listed seven questions that ES must answer before its proposal will be accepted.
(Please see Part 1 for a list of the eight issues.)
In addition to the eight issues, there are is set of seven questions that the DEQ requires ES to answer including:
"1. Agreement with Department of Energy (DOE) Prior to disposal of DU waste, EnergySolutions shall provide a written agreement letter between DOE and EnergySolutions indicating that DOE will accept title to the Federal Cell after closure.
2. Disposal below grade DU waste must be disposed of below the original-grade level of the proposed Federal Cell.
3. Depleted uranium as Class A waste EnergySolutions shall provide documentation that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not plan to reclassify DU.
4. Modeling of the remainder of waste. EnergySolutions shall submit for DEQ approval a revised performance assessment that addresses the total quantities of concentrated DU and other wastes before any radioactive wastes other than the DU waste are emplaced in the proposed Federal Cell.
5. Waste acceptance criteria Prior to any land disposal of significant quantities of concentrated DU, the EnergySolutions shall submit a written Waste Acceptance Criteria plan designed to ensure that all DU waste received by EnergySolutions conforms with all physical, chemical, and radiologic properties assumed in the DU PA modeling report.
6. Prohibition of recycled uranium in DU waste ES is prohibited from land disposal of any quantity of DU that was produced at DOE facilities from uranium-bearing materials containing recycled uranium.
7. Hydrological and hydrogeological properties of lower confined aquifer EnergySolutions will develop and implement a program to provide more detailed site characterization and hydrogeological evaluation of aquifers in the area, particularly the deeper confined aquifer."
Critics of the plan to bury depleted uranium at Clive landfill say that they do not believe that ES will be able to satisfy the requirements of the DEQ. Even if the DEQ requirements are satisfied, there are still potentials problems. A waste facility in Germany had to be permanently closed because of unanticipated problems with ground water moving though the old salt mine. Part of the reason that the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository project was abandoned was because the initial assumptions about ground water movement in the area proved to seriously underestimate the amount and speed of ground water in the area. Even with the best planning and modeling possible, the only way to be sure if the plan will work as projected would be to create a test dump and monitor it for decades. This is unlikely to happen.
