EnergySolutions Increases Lobbying Efforts

EnergySolutions Increases Lobbying Efforts

A Utah company seeking federal permission to import and dispose of more than 20,000 tons of nuclear waste from Italy has raised its campaign contributions to U.S. lawmakers by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions Inc. is donating to members of key energy committees in Congress as it increasingly seeks lucrative federal contracts and legislation beneficial to the nuclear power industry.

Since 2005, the company’s political action committee, executives and investors have poured nearly $400,000 into congressional campaigns through January, up from about $40,000 in the four previous years, Federal Election Commission reports show.

EnergySolutions increased lobbyist spending from $680,000 in 2006 to more than $1 million last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group.

The company already handles some foreign waste, but the amount it wants to import from Italy would be the largest ever from another country, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman.

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