Recently, The Daily Herald published an editorial asking for clarification on Gov. Huntsman's work to reduce radioactive waste coming to Utah.

Getting the facts straight makes the accomplishment easier to understand: Gov. Huntsman has reduced the volume of radioactive waste coming to Utah.

Senate Bill 155 did not take elected officials out of the loop on nuclear waste expansion. Approval from the Legislature, the governor, and the County Commission is still required for any expansion of the facility license boundary for disposal of radioactive waste. The Legislature, the governor, and the Tooele County Commission granted permission for radioactive waste to be disposed within the Envirocare (now EnergySolutions) facility license boundary, Section 32, in 1991.

EnergySolutions gained no advantage by asking the state to hold onto its paperwork. Under the Government Records Access and Management Act, the state is required to maintain those documents. If EnergySolutions re-applies for the license amendment, the license review process will start over; it cannot pick up where it left off.

While EnergySolutions could re-apply for the license amendment in the future, the governor can block, through the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste, any additional low-level radioactive waste from coming into the state.

EnergySolutions has taken U.S. Department of Energy radioactive waste from clean-up projects within our eight-state Northwest Compact. However, significant amounts of Class A low-level waste have come to EnergySolutions from states outside the Northwest Compact. Gov. Huntsman's agreement limits the disposal of radioactive waste to the volumes that are currently approved for the disposal facility. The governor has blocked any new volume of radioactive waste from both inside and outside the Northwest Compact.

Gov. Huntsman does not have the authority to bind future governors to his agreement with EnergySolutions. Only the voters can do that. Future governors, however, will have the authority to ban imports of additional low-level radioactive waste, just as Gov. Huntsman has done.

Gov. Huntsman has done what he said he would do: keep more and hotter radioactive waste from coming to Utah. It's that simple.

Dianne R. Nielson is executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A5.