From the AP:
The House on Wednesday passed a bill banning the importation of radioactive waste for disposal in the United States.
The move was prompted by a Salt Lake City company's plan to import 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Italian nuclear plants. The waste imported by EnergySolutions would have been processed in Tennessee and buried at a site in Utah.
The bill was approved 309 to 112. The Senate hasn't yet acted on the issue.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said it has no power to bar private companies from importing low-level waste as long as they meet safety and security standards. A commission official told the House in October that it also has pending applications to import waste from Brazil and Mexico for disposal in Utah.
"The United States stands alone as the only country in the world that imports other countries' radioactive waste for permanent disposal," Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., a leading sponsor of the bill, said in a statement.
Regardless of the economics and science of the issue, I think we are destined to have the market for nuclear waste disposal be primarily a national one. It's hard enough to find places to put domestic nuclear waste.
