It was a hot issue all year long: Should EnergySolutions be allowed to accept foreign nuclear waste? Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion.

The company first expressed its intent to import 20,000 tons of low-level nuclear waste from Italy in September 2007. Most of the waste would be processed at the company’s processing facility in Tennessee, then up to 1,600 tons of it would be disposed of and stored at EnergySolutions’ facility at Clive in Tooele County.

The issue caught fire, however, in the combustible atmosphere of an election year, with supporters and detractors weighing in loudly. While most of Utah’s state and national representatives opposed the importation of foreign waste, Tooele County leaders favored importation.

Colleen Johnson, who won re-election to the Tooele County Commission in November, spoke in favor of importing waste.

“As I understand it, EnergySolutions would only be accepting what was left after the reprocessing has taken place,” she said in a prepared statement during the campaign. “The foreign waste will be reprocessed in Tennessee and the ash from that process sent to the facility in Clive. This ash product isn’t any different from what is already stored there. If I thought for one second that this facility was endangering our citizens I would oppose it.”

However, state environmental groups and government officials outside the county expressed widespread opposition to the plan.

In a letter to the Northwest Interstate Compact, which regulates low-level radioactive waste in the West, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology Bart Gordon wrote, “If granted, this import license would represent an unprecedented reversal in this nation’s approach to the disposal of its own LLRW [low level radioactive waste]. It would say to the world that the United States is open for business and will take the world’s low-level radioactive waste until our facilities are filled, regardless of the needs of our own country.”

In 2008, Rep. Jim Matheson joined with other House Energy and Commerce Committee members in sponsoring legislation to ban the importation of nuclear waste unless it was originally produced in the United States. U.S. military waste generated abroad was labeled as an exception.

EnergySolutions opposed the bill, saying the decision to accept foreign waste should be left up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“We believe that Congressman Gordon’s legislation stripping the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its jurisdiction over an issue within its purview is unwise, unwarranted and unnecessary,” the company said in a prepared statement. “The NRC has the scientific and technical expertise to make thoughtful decisions based on facts.”

The Utah Radiation Control Board was another critic of importing foreign nuclear waste. The board approved a letter to the NRC earlier in the year requesting that EnergySolutions’ application be denied.

Then, news emerged that the company had already been bringing foreign nuclear waste to its disposal facility in Clive for eight years. Waste from Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada and Mexico has come into the country with approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, been processed at the company’s facility in Tennessee, and then shipped to Clive.

In May, the Northwest Interstate Compact clarified that foreign waste was not permitted. The NRC is waiting for a federal court decision — in a case brought by EnergySolutions in May that claims the Interstate Compact doesn’t have authority over the facility in Clive — before ruling on the company’s application to import foreign nuclear waste.

Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com