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"A bill that would have put the legislature in charge of the state's renewable energy standard was pulled Thursday following a blitz by solar industry officials and local governments. House Bill 2701 was killed two days after hearing from several solar companies, including Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd., which threatened to abandon plans to locate a factory in Goodyear. The bill was seen as a potential showdown with the Arizona Corporation Commission, which had set standards requiring state utilities get 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind by 2025. Provisions included the classification of nuclear power as a renewable."

"The closure of a South Carolina nuclear waste facility has spurred a debate in Utah and nationwide about whether to allow downblending, a process that mixes hotter nuclear waste with less radioactive material so it can be stored at facilities like EnergySolutions'. Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah policy director Christopher Thomas says downblending just creates pockets of more hazardous Class B and C waste, which is currently not allowed in the state. "That does not protect the state of Utah," Thomas says, "that doesn't respect our state rules and in fact it doesn't respect federal guidance, which has held for many years that these kinds of nuclear waste should not be mixed just for the purpose of lowering the waste classification." The Utah Radiation Control Board meets today to consider banning downblending. The board will also hear a presentation from EnergySolutions, which is only allowed to store the lowest-level waste, Class A, at its facility in the west desert."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission assured Rep. Jim Matheson and other Congress members it will stay true to its commitment to see that depleted uranium can be disposed of safely in Utah and elsewhere. But the agency doesn't detail how it reached its decision to stick to its 1981 system, which treats depleted uranium as "Class A" waste, the standard category for the least hazardous low-level waste. Matheson, of Utah, and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., hope to find at least some of those answers in the thousands of pages of documents that they have requested from NRC and that are due next Monday.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says classifying large amounts of depleted uranium as a hotter type of low-level radioactive waste without further study would not provide additional protections to public health, safety or the environment. The NRC's comments come in an April 9 letter to Reps. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Edward Markey, D-Mass. The congressmen have questioned the NRC's March decision to regulate large quantities of depleted uranium as the least hazardous kind of low-level radioactive waste, known as Class A waste. Depleted uranium is different from other waste because it becomes more radioactive over time.