Depleted uranium train arrives at Utah site

Salt Lake Tribune – EnergySolutions Inc. opened its gates Sunday night to the latest shipment of depleted uranium from the Savannah River cleanup site in South Carolina. But the waste won’t be buried just yet, under an agreement between Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and the U.S. Energy Department. Instead, the 5,408 drums of low-level radioactive waste will be unloaded tomorrow and placed in a specialized landfill cell for storage until Utah regulators have an opportunity to wrap up a proposed license change and a proposed regulation change. The EnergySolutions site already contains an estimated 49,000 tons of depleted uranium, a by-product of nuclear fuel enrichment and bomb-making that has the unusual quality of becoming more hazardous over time. EnergySolutions has said it will take at least 35,000 years for the depleted uranium at its site to exceed the radiological hazard limit set in state law.Read Article

Tags: North America, nuclear, pollution & toxins, weapons