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US Bill on the way to banning foreign nuclear waste imports

Bill to ban foreign nuke waste makes small advance Google News By BROCK VERGAKIS (AP) – 28 Oct 09 SALT LAKE CITY — A bill designed to keep foreign countries from disposing their nuclear waste in the United States is taking a small but significant step toward getting a U.S. House committee vote for the first time.
On Thursday, the Radioactive Import Deterrence Act will undergo a process known as markup, where members of a House subcommittee will debate and recommend changes to the bill before it advances.The bill to ban the importation of low-level radioactive waste was drafted in response to a Utah company’s plan to import up to 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Italy’s shuttered nuclear power program through the ports of Charleston, S.C., or New Orleans. After processing in Tennessee, about 1,600 tons would be disposed of in EnergySolutions Inc.’s facility in the western Utah desert.It is the largest single amount of radioactive waste that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ever been asked to allow into the country, and the NRC doesn’t have the ability to keep the waste out simply because it is foreign………………….

in Utah, disposing of any foreign radioactive waste is unpopular. The NRC received a record number of public comments on the company’s import license application, most in opposition………………..The bill’s sponsors — Reps. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., and Lee Terry, R-Neb. — believe they now have the momentum necessary to move their legislation forward.

The Associated Press: Bill to ban foreign nuke waste makes small advance

October 28, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, politics, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, wastes