Friday, August 07, 2009

EnergySolutions' Utah site due trainloads of depleted uranium

More trains filled with depleted uranium are coming to Utah. Even as state regulators consider a moratorium on new shipments of the radioactive material -- which becomes more hazardous over time -- the U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship another 14,800 barrels of it to the EnergySolutions Inc. disposal site in Tooele County. Part of the $1.6 billion in federal stimulus money for the Savannah River cleanup site in South Carolina will pay for rail cars filled with depleted uranium to be buried in Utah during the next 13 months. "This is exactly the situation we were hoping to prevent by asking the state Radiation Control Board to enact a moratorium on depleted uranium," said Christopher Thomas of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. The EnergySolutions site, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City, has buried 49,000 tons of depleted uranium waste from past cleanups nationwide...SaltLakeTribune

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