Senators voted 23-6 to advance HB220, which signals state support for the company to take large amounts of a kind of low-level radioactive material that grows more hazardous over time.
EnergySolutions, based in Salt Lake City, is vying with competitors to take shipments of depleted uranium from government facilities in Ohio and Kentucky — but it still needs to complete a complex and expensive “performance assessment” by state regulators, which was launched in 2012 and is still underway.
HB220, which now advances to a final vote of the Senate, essentially assures EnergySolutions — a large political donor on Utah’s Capitol Hill — that if the company passes that assessment and also gains approval from the head of the state Division of Radiation Control, full state consent for the waste will be granted, with key conditions added Wednesday.