What does it cost to buy a governor these days? EnergySolutions and their management are hoping it's not more than the $63,800 they spent on Idaho Republican Governor-elect C.L. Butch Otter's 2006 campaign. Let's take a look at EnergySolutions and what they might hope to gain for their money.
EnergySolutions is a Salt Lake City, Utah based company that was formed in 2006 by merging BNG America, Duratek, Envirocare of Utah, and the D&D division of Scientech. They specialize
... in nuclear services, including high consequence nuclear operations, such as high level waste management, spent fuel handling and transportation; complex D&D projects of nuclear reactors and highly radioactive nuclear facilities; high-end technical challenges such as fuel sludge treatment and high level waste treatment; and major decommissioning of both government and commercial nuclear facilities.
President and CEO, Steve Creamer, purchased Envirocare of Utah in 2004 and according to The Salt Lake Tribune, knows his way around a statehouse.
Active politically in advancing his interests, Creamer is a familiar figure at the Utah Statehouse. State election records show he contributed more than $80,000 to candidates in the 2004 gubernatorial election, including $45,000 to [state Board of Regents Chairman Nolan] Karras, $20,000 to Gov. Olene Walker and $15,000 to Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr.
The Tribune also reports that he is well-known throughout Utah for some of his costly mistakes.
Creamer & Noble engineered the Quail Creek earthen dam near St. George which burst Jan. 1, 1989. No one was injured, but the disaster cost the state more than $11 million.
Around that time, Creamer was enduring questions about his involvement with a proposed 83-mile highway through the Book Cliffs from the town of Ouray in Uintah County to Interstate 70 near Cisco in Grand County.
Creamer & Noble was instrumental in getting the Legislature to give counties mineral royalties collected by the federal government, which Grand County planned to draw on when they paid the firm for its road engineering. The Grand County Council eventually killed the highway proposal, but not before the fight helped destroy the very structure of the county's government.
Then came Syncrete. Creamer & Noble officials were consulting engineers to Hodson Chemical, which developed the experimental concrete overlay the state used in 1989 to resurface a 4-mile stretch of Interstate 15.
After the material started breaking into chunks and hurtling into motorists' windshields, the federal Office of Inspector General and the Utah Attorney General's Office conducted a criminal investigation into the project, which cost taxpayers nearly $3 million.
So what does EnergySolutions want in Idaho? Currently there aren't any definitive answers, but looking at the company's history we can draw some conclusions.
Duratek, one of the merged companies, is reportedly one of 40 firms that has submitted a bid to the Department of Energy to develop nuclear waste recycling technology. EnergySolutions denies that Utah would be the site for this recycling facility.
"I can promise you, categorically, it's not anywhere in Utah," said Tim Barney, vice president of governmental relations at the company.
But they are keeping mum about where such a site would be located.
BNG America, another of the merged companies, was a British government radioactive waste cleanup company that is reported to have managed projects at the Idaho National Laboratory, among others.
So, EnergySolutions through Duratek has submitted a bid to conduct nuclear waste reprocessing research which will not be sited in Utah, they also have through BNG America previous ties to projects at INL , and they have contributed over $63,000 to the newly elected Idaho Governor's campaign. It wouldn't be a stretch to conclude that they hope to develop technology to reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods and conduct this research at INL or perhaps some other yet-to-be-determined Idaho site.
What would that mean for Idaho? For some background on radioactive waste see this page from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Specifically on reprocessing the NRC says:
Reprocessing separates residual uranium and unfissioned plutonium from the fission products. The uranium and plutonium can be used again as fuel. Most of the high-level waste (other than spent fuel) generated over the last 35 years has come from reprocessing of fuel from government-owned plutonium production reactors and from naval, research and test reactors. A small amount of liquid high-level waste was generated from the reprocessing of commercial power reactor fuel in the 1960's and early 1970's. There is no commercial reprocessing of nuclear power fuel in the United States at present; almost all existing commercial high-level waste is in the form of unreprocessed spent fuel.
Snake River Alliance has this to say about reprocessing:
It increases the availability of weapons usable material and encourages proliferation, is the most polluting step in the nuclear process, is outrageously expensive, and will not remove the need for waste disposal outside the human biosphere. It is being pushed by the Bush Administration and is gaining support in Congress. [...]
[The] Bush Administration is pushing to revive reprocessing. ... The Administration and some members of Congress have seized on claims that reprocessing is “recycling.” The piles of plutonium in every country that’s ever undertaken reprocessing gives the lie to those claims.
According to the NRC and Snake River Alliance, there is still waste remaining from previous reprocessing being stored at INL. Does Idaho want to bring additional high-level radioactive waste into the state for reprocessing research? If that is EnergySolutions' plan, residents should tell the soon-to-be governor how they feel about that plan.
Update 12.17.06: In a Nov. 29, 2006 release, the DOE announced that eleven sites have been chosen to receive up to $16 million in grants for siting studies for spent fuel reprocessing and will award those grants early next year after negotiations are complete. On the list and sponsored by EnergySolutions are Atomic City, ID; Barnwell, SC and Roswell, NM. Also on the list and sponsored by Regional Development Alliance is Idaho National Laboratory, ID.
Information generated from the detailed siting studies of non-DOE sites is expected to address a variety of site-related matters, including site and nearby land uses; demographics; aquatic and riparian ecological communities; terrestrial plant and animal habitat; threatened or endangered species; historical, archaeological and cultural resources; geology and seismology; weather and climate; and regulatory and permitting requirements. Information requirements for the DOE sites are more limited due to the availability of previous studies.
At the conclusion of the siting studies, the DOE will make decisions whether to move forward with the facilities and where to locate them.
Along with EnergySolutions' contributions in Idaho, they contributed at least $25,000 to the 2006 campaign of Gov. Bill Richardson (D) of New Mexico. As of yet, no contributions to Gov. Mark Sanford (R) of South Carolina were found.