Ban on importing foreign nuclear waste advances
November 04, 2009 17:51 PM
By Bill Theobald, Gannett Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Legislation that would ban the importation of foreign radioactive waste took a small step forward on Tuesday when a House subcommittee signed off on the bill.
The legislation, co-authored by Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Murfreesboro, was proposed in response to an application by EnergySolutions Inc. to bring in 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Italian nuclear facilities to the U.S. The material would be processed at a company plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and then shipped to Utah for storage.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Energy and Environment subcommittee passed the bill onto the full committee by a voice vote.
Only Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., raised objections to the legislation. An original sponsor of the bill, Whitfield said he changed his mind because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not think importing foreign waste would create a shortage of storage space for U.S. waste; because other importation licenses have been granted in the past; and because the dispute over the EnergySolutions proposal is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.
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