Last week, Energy Solu­tions invited a group of blog­gers on a tour of it’s Clive facil­ity in Tooele, Utah. If you know any­thing about the com­pany, you also know that they get a bad rap for the work they do, so they’re work­ing to man­age that bad rap by reach­ing out to the com­mu­nity and clear­ing up mis­con­cep­tions through edu­ca­tion and answer­ing tough questions.

Our guide for the day was Jay Vance, Direc­tor of Research, who accom­pa­nied us on a bus ride about an hour away from down­town Salt Lake City to their Clive Facil­ity. On the way, he talked to us about the place of energy in our daily lives. Matt Merkel, one of the blog­gers on the tour, raised some ques­tions about the deeper prob­lems we’re fac­ing about the food and energy indus­tries and how avoid­ing a monoc­racy is the safest way for us to cre­ate a sus­tain­able world.

Jay replied with info on Energy Solu­tions’ focus on diverse energy sources, but how the waste from these prod­ucts need to be dis­posed of in a way that is envi­ron­men­tally safe.

When we arrived at the Clive facil­ity, Jay explained that Energy Solu­tions has cleaned up plu­to­nium dump­ing grounds and turned them into wildlife refuges. Sus­tain­abil­ity and envi­ron­men­tal issues really seem to be top of the list for the com­pany. Even the choice of their Clive Facil­ity site seems well thought-​​out and cho­sen because of it’s iso­lated loca­tion, unsuit­abil­ity for humans (because of the high alka­line con­tent in the soil and very high salt con­tent of the water) — so they weren’t mov­ing com­mu­ni­ties out so they could dis­pose of low-​​level radioac­tive waste.

We took the tour around the plant, met some of the work­ers there, asked hard ques­tions, and Ben Winslow from Fox 13 news joined us and asked even tougher ques­tions — and I left there feel­ing like they’re doing a use­ful ser­vice for the coun­try. Years of nuclear and radioac­tive indus­try waste gets safely dis­posed of here. And yet, there’s a lot of fear-​​mongers who make it seem like Energy Solu­tions are mak­ing Utah a dump­ing ground for the US. Hav­ing toured the plant and spend­ing hours look­ing into those claims, I don’t see any hard evi­dence to sup­port it.

Actu­ally, if this is of con­cern to you — and as far as I’m con­cerned it should be — our children’s futures depend on the good deci­sions we make for the envi­ron­ment today — you should take a look your­self at what Energy Solu­tions is doing. They offer a vir­tual tour on their web­site http://www.energysolutions.com, and you can get a tour of their facil­ity by con­tact­ing them on the website.

Fox 13 has a video about the Energy Solu­tions Clive Facility.  

You can fol­low Energy Solu­tions of twit­ter — @EnergySolutions

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