Italian Waste Hits New Snag

Utah is more remote than Italy, with about 30 people per square mile to Italy’s 5000. That doesn’t mean Utahns want 20,000 tons of radioactive waste from Italy buried in their deserts. “We believe that any country that has the technological capability of producing nuclear power within its borders should not seek to dispose of its waste outside them,” reads a letter from a state advisory board that opposes the nuclear burial plan. The waste would travel more than 9000 kilometers, first sent overseas to Tennessee for processing, before heading to the specialized landfill in Utah, about 80 miles away from the state’s major population center. Utahns note that the US has limited capacity for its own nuclear waste. As oil supplies shrink and more countries turn to nuclear energy, Utahns resist any plan that their deserts become dumping grounds for the world’s nuclear waste. – YaleGlobal