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Utah State must rule on vexed question of “blended” radioactive wastes

The Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah has challenged the idea of blending wastes to get around limits at the Utah site and urged state authorities to prohibit it.

Utah: NRC ruling leaves nuke waste rules to state, The Washington Post, By PAUL FOY, The Associated Press, October 15, 2010; SALT LAKE CITY — Federal regulators have put off a decision on whether blended radioactive waste can be buried in Utah.The Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided this week to develop a new set of rules assessing the dangers of blended waste based on the risks at individual disposal sites…..

..The state board has issued draft regulations that require an operator to prove that mixing hotter but less concentrated wastes won’t create an accidental danger hundreds or thousands of years in the future if somebody stumbles across the waste or digs it up…….

The decades-old federal system for handling radioactive waste didn’t anticipate new types of waste such as depleted uranium or blending.

Blending involves mixing higher- and lower-concentrated wastes, and it is seen by the nuclear industry as a solution to the closing of a South Carolina landfill in 2008 that took the hottest forms of waste.

EnergySolutions is licensed to take waste that can be dangerously radioactive for 100 years. The South Carolina site took one type of waste that remains hazardous for up to 300 years and another that’s considered a risk for up to 500 years…….

The Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah has challenged the idea of blending wastes to get around limits at the Utah site and urged state authorities to prohibit it. Utah: NRC ruling leaves nuke waste rules to state

October 16, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive