EnergySolutions (stylized as Energy''Solutions''), headquartered in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, is one of the largest processors of

low level waste Low-level waste (LLW) or Low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) is nuclear waste that does not fit into the categorical definitions for intermediate-level waste (ILW), high-level waste (HLW), spent nuclear fuel (SNF), transuranic waste (TRU), or ce ...

(LLW) in America, making it also one of the world's largest nuclear waste processors. It was formed in 2007 when Envirocare acquired three other nuclear waste disposal companies: Scientech D&D, BNG America, and Duratek. EnergySolutions has operations in over 40 states, with a licensed landfill to dispose of radioactive waste approximately west of

Tooele County, Utah Tooele County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 58,218. Its county seat and largest city is Tooele. The county was created in 1850 and organized the following year. Tooele Count ...

. It also operates a disposal site in

Barnwell County, South Carolina Barnwell County is a county in the U.S. state of South Carolina. As of the 2020 census, its population was 20,589. Barnwell County is part of the Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is located in the Central Savann ...

. The company possesses the technology to convert waste into alternative material such as durable glass and is contracted by the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

to assist in waste conversion efforts. The company held the

naming rights Naming rights are a financial transaction and form of advertising or memorialization whereby a corporation, person, or other entity purchases the right to name a facility, object, location, program, or event, typically for a defined period of t ...

to the

Utah Jazz The Utah Jazz are an American professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City. The Jazz compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference (NBA), Western Conference, Northwest Division (NBA), ...

home

EnergySolutions Arena Vivint Arena (stylized as vivint arena), formerly known as Delta Center, EnergySolutions Arena and Vivint Smart Home Arena, is an indoor arena located in Salt Lake City, Utah. The arena serves as the home venue for the National Basketball Asso ...

from November 20 2006 until October 26, 2015, when

Vivint Vivint is a public smart home company in the United States and Canada. It was founded by Keith Nellesen and Todd Pedersen in 1999. In 2012, The Blackstone Group acquired Vivint for more than $2 billion. In January 2020, the company completed ...

, a home security system provider based in Provo, Utah, acquired the naming rights. In June 2007 the company took over operation and management of several

Magnox Magnox is a type of nuclear power/production reactor that was designed to run on natural uranium with graphite as the moderator and carbon dioxide gas as the heat exchange coolant. It belongs to the wider class of gas-cooled reactors. The n ...

atomic plants from British Nuclear Fuels plc in the United Kingdom through the acquisition of the BNFL subsidiary – Reactor Sites Management Company (RMSC).

Formation of EnergySolutions

Envirocare of

purchased the

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

-based Scientech D&D division in October 2005. On February 2, 2006, Envirocare announced the $90 million purchase of BNG America, a subsidiary of

British Nuclear Fuels British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) was a nuclear energy and fuels company owned by the UK Government. It was a manufacturer of nuclear fuel (notably MOX), ran reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent fuel (main ...

(BNFL) based in

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. Envirocare of Utah was renamed EnergySolutions, with corporate headquarters in

Salt Lake City, Utah Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

. On February 7, 2006, EnergySolutions announced it would buy

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

-based Duratek, a

publicly traded company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (list ...

, for $396 million in an all-cash deal. The

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money ( leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loa ...

was financed by banks led by Citigroup, effectively taking the company private. After the acquisitions, EnergySolutions had 2,500 employees in 40 states with an annual revenue of $280 million. EnergySolutions owns two of the nation's four commercial low-level nuclear-waste repositories, its primary competitor,

Waste Control Specialists Waste Control Specialists LLC (WCS) is a treatment, storage, & disposal company dealing in radioactive, hazardous, and mixed wastes. Developed and controlled by Texas billionaire investor Harold Simmons until his death at the end of 2013, the com ...

, built a fourth repository in Texas.

Envirocare

Envirocare of Utah, Inc. (Envirocare) buried Class A

low level radioactive waste Low-level waste (LLW) or Low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) is nuclear waste that does not fit into the categorical definitions for intermediate-level waste (ILW), high-level waste (HLW), spent nuclear fuel (SNF), transuranic waste (TRU), or ce ...

(LLRW) in an engineered landfill. It began operations in 1990 in Clive, Utah. Envirocare was founded by Iranian immigrant Khosrow Semnani in 1988. Semnani served as president of the company until May 1997, when Envirocare's largest customer—the

Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-re ...

—requested that he step down in the wake of a bribery scandal. In mid-December 2004, Semnani sold Envirocare for an undisclosed sum. Steve Creamer became the company's new CEO. The deal was financed by private equity firms, led by Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer of New York, Creamer Investments, and Peterson Partners both of Salt Lake City. Envirocare management promised to drop its plans to bury hotter class B and C nuclear waste in Utah in deference to growing political opposition to the company, which was poised to ban the waste. Envirocare subsequently made the acquisitions and became EnergySolutions.

Duratek

Based in

Columbia, Maryland Columbia is a census-designated place in Howard County, Maryland. It is one of the principal communities of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. It is a planned community consisting of 10 self-contained villages. Columbia began with ...

, Duratek was founded in 1983. In 1990, the company merged with General Technical Services (GTS); the resulting company was known as ''GTS Duratek''. That year, the company formed a joint venture with another firm — Chem-Nuclear Systems, Inc. — to build a commercial

vitrification Vitrification (from Latin ''vitreum'', "glass" via French ''vitrifier'') is the full or partial transformation of a substance into a glass, that is to say, a non- crystalline amorphous solid. Glasses differ from liquids structurally and glasses po ...

system. In 1997, GTS Duratek acquired the Scientific Ecology Group (SEG). In 2000, the company purchased the nuclear services business arm of Waste Management Inc. One year later, the company announced that it was dropping GTS from its name, and was once again known as ''Duratek''. Duratek was purchased by EnergySolutions at a 25.7% premium over the February 7, 2006 stock price when the merger was announced.

Energy Solutions

Since its inception, Energy Solutions has collected primarily domestic, Class A nuclear waste for its west Utah desert site. On June 7, 2007, the company announced the acquisition of the UK based BNFL subsidiary – Reactor Sites Management Company (RSMC). The sale included Magnox Electric Limited (MEL), a wholly owned subsidiary of RSMC, which holds the contracts and licences to operate ten nuclear reactor sites in the UK on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). Through the acquisition, the company took over operational and management responsibilities of several

atomic plants from British Nuclear Fuels plc. In 2009 it attempted to bring 20,000 tons of waste from Italy's shuttered nuclear power program through the ports of either Charleston, South Carolina, or New Orleans. After processing in Tennessee, about 1,600 tons would be disposed of in Utah. The importation attempt was eventually abandoned. EnergySolutions sought permission in 2011 from the State of Utah for its "Semprasafe" process to blend, or dilute, the currently allowed Class A low-level radioactive waste with more radioactive Class B and Class C wastes until it just meets the Class A waste levels its license allows per container at its Clive disposal site.Utah environmental group says 'downblended' waste means double radioactivity in landfill
Salt Lake Tribune, October 5, 2011. Some estimates projected that this could increase Energy Solutions' Utah site total of 7,450

curie In computing, a CURIE (or ''Compact URI'') defines a generic, abbreviated syntax for expressing Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). It is an abbreviated URI expressed in a compact syntax, and may be found in both XML and non-XML grammars. A CURIE ...

s of radiation per annum (2010), to an additional 19,184 to 28,470 curies each year. The Division of Radiation Control of Utah considered, but rejected blending to allow Class B and Class C waste into Utah.Opinion: Stick to rules on importing blended waste
Salt Lake Tribune, October 8, 2011. This would have made Utah, after Texas, the second state in the US to allow the importation of Class B and C radioactive wastes. On November 15, 2015, EnergySolutions announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to purchase Waste Control Specialists for $270 million in cash and $20 million in stock. This sale was blocked by the DOJ for breaching anti-trust law. In November 2015, EnergySolutions sold its Projects, Products and Technology division to

WS Atkins plc Atkins is a British multinational engineering, design, planning, architectural design, project management and consulting services company. It is a subsidiary of SNC-Lavalin and is headquartered in London. The company was founded as WS Atkins & ...

for $318 million. Energy Capital Partners is the seller. The deal includes EnergySolutions’ North American government, Europe, and Asia businesses, and about 650 employees. EnergySolutions will retain its logistics, processing, and disposal (“LP&D”) business, its reactor decommissioning business, including current projects at

Zion, Illinois Zion is a city in Lake County, Illinois, United States. Per the 2020 census, the population was 24,655. History The city was founded in July 1901 by John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907), a Scots-Australian evangelical minister and faith healer who ...

and La Crosse, Wisconsin, and its North American utility services. Most of the radioactive waste from the decommissioning of the

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a permanently closed nuclear power plant located south of San Clemente, California, on the Pacific coast, in Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region IV. The plant was shut down in 2013 after repl ...

is going to the Energy Solutions facility in Clive, Utah, and is being transported by rail.

References

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Energysolutions Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Radioactive waste Companies based in Salt Lake City 2007 establishments in Utah