SALT LAKE CITY — Since taking the helm of EnergySolutions six years ago, Steve Creamer became the face of a company that often found itself in the eye of the public storm.
In television commercials and newspaper ads, Creamer tried to explain what the controversial nuclear waste company was all about. That job will now fall to another. Creamer resigned Friday as chief executive officer, effective immediately. Val Christensen, who has worked as company president since 2008, will replace him.
"Steve Creamer had the unique vision and energy to create a strong public company based in Utah that plays a critical role in America's nuclear industry," Christensen said. "Steve will continue to be an important sounding board and a strong supporter of the company."
Christensen said he was instructed by the company's board to not disclose why Creamer, 58, resigned.
"It may seem like an abrupt announcement to the rest of the world, but this succession plan has been in place for some time," he said, adding that Creamer indicated some time ago that he would give up his top spot this year.
Christensen did say that, while he could not disclose what prompted the resignation, he could say what it was not about.
"He did not resign because of a clash with the board, and it was not about strategy (or) philosophy, and it had nothing to do with financial accounting, contracts or the economics of the company. All the fundamentals of the company are sound."
Creamer was vacationing in Hawaii and unavailable for comment.
EnergySolutions stock fell dramatically Friday following the announcement. Shares of the Salt Lake City-based waste management firm were down $1.44, or nearly 18.5 percent to close at $6.35. During the past year, the price has ranged from $5.22 to $10.80.
In November 2007, Creamer took the company public, offering 11.85 million shares at $19 to $21 per share. The company's controlling stockholder, ENV Holdings LLC, offered 18.15 million shares. Since then, the company's shares have traded as high as $27.85 per share in December 2007, and as low as $3.55 in November 2008.
Creamer, a Utah State University graduate, began his career as an engineer for the state environmental and transportation departments. He later was president of Creamer and Noble Engineers, a consulting firm. He also worked as an executive at East Carbon Development Corp., Laidlaw Environmental and USPCI, a Union Pacific hazardous-waste company.
Creamer became EnergySolutions' chairman and chief executive officer in 2004, when he struck a deal to buy Envirocare, a company that ran a nuclear waste facility in Tooele County.
Envirocare, now EnergySolutions, has drawn criticism from many Utah residents and environmentalists who oppose bringing nuclear waste into the state, and who worry the company will make Utah a nuclear dumping ground.
The EnergySolutions facility in Clive, 70 miles west of Salt Lake City, handles more than 95 percent of all commercial low-level radioactive waste produced in the United States, according to the Government Accountability Office. The company now has processing sites in Utah, Tennessee, South Carolina and the United Kingdom.
The company has been at odds with environmental advocates for years.
In February 2009, it offered to pay Utah 50 percent of an estimated $100 million a year for 10 years for permission to accept low-level waste from overseas to be stored in Utah.
Critics, including then-Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., balked at the proposal, saying that doing so would violate the Northwest Compact, a regional coalition of states tasked with overseeing low-level radioactive waste management.
State lawmakers took no action during the 2009 legislative session, and the matter went to U.S. District Court. In May 2009, a federal court upheld the company's contention that its efforts to bring waste into the state fall outside the regulatory purview of the compact.
Speaking during a conference call to reporters last August, Creamer said his company would likely pull its offer to share half of the net revenues produced by contracts to store foreign-generated waste at its Clive disposal location if its proposal wasn't accepted prior to the court's final ruling.
After the ruling, the Utah Attorney General's Office appealed the decision. The appeal is still pending.
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