EnergySolutions hopes this year to receive a state license to finally begin accepting large amounts of depleted uranium at its radioactive waste disposal facility in Clive, Utah.
That would mark the end of a regulatory process that has stretched for more than a decade.
State legislation enacted in March 2018 set three requirements for the Salt Lake City-based nuclear services company to dispose of large volumes of depleted uranium at Clive, according to Vern Rogers, EnergySolutions director of regulatory affairs. Management has taken steps to address all three, he said during a June 9 session at the American Nuclear Society strictly virtual annual meeting.
The company has completed the performance assessment for the proposed federal cell that would hold the waste, and responded to questions from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Rogers said. The state agency is reviewing the document.
The Department of Energy has agreed to take title to the federal cell and depleted uranium, as required by the law, Rogers said. “We have signed a document where the DOE had agreed to do that, so that one is completed as well.”
Finally, management in January of this year filed the license application for its federal cell with the DEQ’s Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control.
“We’re hoping that, based on where we stand at this point and what they’re telling us, that the licensing actions for all of that will be completed this year, 2020,” Rogers said.
The Clive facility, in Tooele County at the eastern side of the Great Salt Lake Desert, is already licensed for disposal of Class A, mixed, and other radioactive waste types.
In 2008, it received 5,408 drums of depleted uranium shipped from the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. However, roughly another 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium oxide is expected to be generated by DOE depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion plants in Kentucky and Ohio.
