SALT LAKE CITY — He is a man of understated demeanor in an industry marked by shrill rhetoric, by emotional cries of environmental damage, by ardent slogans that screech of Utah being the nuclear dumping ground of the world.
Still, his voice remains one of quiet conviction, of black-and-white facts, of reiterating his points in the face of a loud chorus of disapproval.
Val Christensen, the newly named chief executive officer of EnergySolutions, has stepped onto the center stage of the nuclear arena. His appointment as head of the company comes as developments in the industry and companion controversy power up at a furious pace, locally, nationally and globally.
In Utah, critics of the company that operates the world's largest waste disposal facility in Clive, Tooele County, are waging the radioactive battle on multiple fronts.
Foreign waste. Depleted uranium. Waste blending.
Last year, after the company's 10-member board tapped him as president, Christensen ventured into the potentially stressing fray of being the "face" of a company that many love to hate but few understand.
"Initially it was something I had to adjust to, but I really embraced the opportunity to tell the company story," he said. "I was energized by the chance to get the facts out about the company and to find that people understood that a lot of the things they were hearing were not true. … It really hasn't been a taxing or uncomfortable thing."
The ascension to CEO of inarguably Utah's most controversial company began as a steady climb for the Brigham Young University law graduate.
It was shaped in the basement of Hyrum Smith's home in the mid-1980s when the founder of what would go on to be Franklin Covey was setting up shop to produce day planners and homemade management courses. Christensen was on the ground in the company's formative stages and went on to be its general counsel and executive vice president, running all aspects of the operation.
From its basement beginnings, the company blossomed to include more than 1,500 associates and 37 offices in more than 100 countries.
After Envirocare of Utah joined with two other companies to become EnergySolutions in 2006, top executives started hunting for general counsel, and again Christensen found himself in the formative stages of shepherding a new corporate animal.
"I was really intrigued with the potential of the business. I did my own due diligence about the company and concluded it was safe. It was a business that had a lot of negative publicity. From everything I researched, it was not earned or deserved."
But looking back on the yelps of criticism directed at the company, Christensen concedes EnergySolutions has faltered in the public opinion arena by focusing too much on a corporation communication strategy dominated by "branding" or "feel good" ads.
"We have not really focused on what we should have — educating people about what we do. When we do, we win their hearts and minds."
The new idea behind EnergySolutions' ad campaign is to better explain what it does and confront the controversy head on by giving people a glimpse inside the facility. Radio ads now invite people to tour the facility for themselves.
Christensen can already hear the snorts of disbelief, the derisive scorn from critics like HEAL Utah, a grassroots anti-nuclear group constantly swinging a club to strike at the armor of the international company.
Executive director Vanessa Pierce had nothing good to say about Christensen taking over as CEO.
"In practice, Val has been running the show for the past few months and has been running roughshod over Utah's efforts to protect our state from depleted uranium, diluted B & C waste and foreign waste. (B and C waste is more radioactive and prohibited under Utah law.) We can expect more of the same with him at the helm," she said.
HEAL Utah's strident opposition is expected, Christensen said, but he insists it is not representative.
"Other than those who are categorically against everything nuclear, I have not encountered any person or group who, after learning the facts and understanding the science, oppose EnergySolutions' business. HEAL is certainly the loudest anti-nuclear voice in the state but not the voice that represents the informed citizens of Utah."
Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson says the criticism heaped on EnergySolutions and Christensen is "knee-jerk" and based on misleading slogans.
"I don't think it is helpful in terms of people understanding what is going on," he said.
Christensen and Anderson are former law partners who have forged an unlikely relationship over the years — that of the ardent environmentalist rubbing shoulders with Utah's newly crowned king of radioactive waste.
But Anderson, who took on what was then Envirocare over the import of hotter waste in 2003, is candid in his praise of both the company and the man.
"Val is as hardworking and has an ethical core as strong as anyone I have ever known," he said. "He's bright. He's honest. He will do a good job at addressing these issues with real integrity."
Policymakers and critics, he said, should be focusing their attention on the climate-change dilemma instead of "directing venom toward a company that is providing a safe means of disposal for the lowest level of radioactive waste."
Christensen, at freshly turned 57, is old enough to know he can't wave his musical wand and forever silence the voice of critics.
It is enough, for Christensen, to temper the outcry with facts and go about the business of running a company that has the socially unpalatable job of handling nuclear waste but performs functions that are incredibly lucrative.
It is his task to continue on with the business of a company that has handled the decontamination and decommissioning of more than 60 nuclear facilities worldwide.
From the weapons production site at Rocky Flats in Colorado that has been transformed into a national wildlife refuge to the removal of uranium tailings in Moab, the business of EnergySolutions will continue, critics or not.
In the silence of his life, in the between times of the corporate crush that comes with running an international company, the Bountiful resident who was raised on a farm in Ephraim turns to other, more important things.
His wife, Loralee. His eight children, including Daniel, the now-17-year-old Kazakhstan native Christensen and his wife adopted after he spontaneously captured their hearts.
"We agreed to put him up for one night. … He came into the house, I met him and got him a glass of water. When I looked into his eyes, it was those of a child who had been gone a long, long time and had just come home."
They decided to take one Utah family's bad experience of mingling their lives with that of a foreign 9-year-old boy and turn it into something good.
After four months of paperwork and negotiations with the adoption company, the Christensens traveled to Kazakhstan and brought him home for good.
"He's just been a huge joy."
Christensen, the president and CEO, spends his days penning directives, writing memos, overseeing the crafting of a comprehensive plan on how to safely store depleted uranium at the company's Clive facility.
He jots notes, talks, writes down figures and thoughts, and talks some more.
In those between times, Christensen — the man — writes poetry.
It is not a tributary for corporate frustration but rather sentimental expressions that capture times past, times future.
He once wrote a poem envisioning his daughters as old women, trading life stories over a restaurant table.
In one, "Sunday Boys," he harkens to the past in Ephraim on the weathered concrete steps of a library next to an old red church, where the only five boys of the same age in town would gather when they were supposed to be in church.
"We grew up decades ago and took a dozen different roads from town," the poem reads. "We were once co-captains of sailing boats, astronauts sharing cubical red rocket ships, brave, cold and alone together in space. But now the awkward shyness of our childhood intimacy leaves us friendly strangers."
While family and poetry and his two Harley-Davidsons tug at his heart, Christensen — the CEO and the man who believes in EnergySolutions — doesn't let his emotions or the critics run his day on the job.
"There are moments when I am tempted to tire of the fight and at those times, I realize it is not about me," he said, waving off phone calls from investors, politicians, and who knows who else.
"This is not my fight. It is a fight on behalf of the industry, hundreds of employees in the state and customers who need our services so I don't allow myself to become selfishly tired of the controversy and the battles we are forced to fight every day."
e-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com