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BOISE, Idaho — Eight Western states Thursday rejected a company’s plan to ship tons of radioactive Italian waste to Utah by declaring that rules don’t allow for foreign loads.

EnergySolutions Inc. is applying for a federal license to import 20,000 tons of waste from four Italian nuclear reactors, with a portion of it to be buried at its private disposal site in Clive, Utah.

But members of the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management said their rules would need to be changed to allow roughly five or six rail cars of waste a year to be buried there.

The group’s decision, however, doesn’t mean the waste can’t enter the country. Indeed, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is reviewing the import license, doubts that the unanimous vote will kill the application.

The NRC public comment period on the license application ends June 10.

“They could say we’d still like to bring the material for processing in Tennessee and dispose of it in some other way, presumably exporting the rest of it back to Italy,” NRC spokesman Dave McIntyre said in a phone interview.

Environmental groups and Utah opposed disposal in Utah, with Gov. Jon Huntsman pledging to keep his state from becoming a dumping ground for global nuclear waste.

Congress created the compact in 1985 as a regional system for managing low-level radioactive waste. The compact’s designated facility is in Richland, Wash., which accepts waste from Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Montana and Wyoming.

EnergySolutions takes waste from other states. Earlier this week, the company filed a lawsuit to challenge the compact’s ability to regulate shipments to Utah.

The company concedes it has “coordinated some of its activities with the Northwest Compact” in the past, but insists the panel has no authority over what it handles because the Utah site is privately owned.

After the vote Thursday, EnergySolutions executives said they’re hoping a federal judge rules in their favor.

“We don’t believe they have the authority to make decisions like they did that govern our operations,” Val Christensen, vice president and general counsel, told The Associated Press.

EnergySolutions wants to bring the Italian waste through New Orleans or Charleston, S.C., for processing and incineration in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The company then wants to bury 1,600 tons in Utah, home of the country’s largest and only privately owned low-level radioactive waste dump.

“EnergySolutions is a bully that’s used to getting its way,” said John Urgo of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, which opposes the shipment. “The Northwest Interstate Compact and Gov. Huntsman refused to be bullied.”

In a related move, compact members approved a resolution to stop foreign waste from being reclassified as domestic waste at EnergySolutions’ Oak Ridge facility, as has been done since 2006 with incinerated waste from Canada, France and Germany.

Those changes resolved problems with separating waste — an inaccurate, costly and potentially dangerous process, company officials said.

Even before the controversy over the Italian shipment, some radioactive waste of foreign origin incinerated in Tennessee likely has been buried at the EnergySolutions site in Utah.

Oregon’s compact member, Ken Niles, said he wasn’t aiming to require foreign waste already buried at Clive to be removed.

But in coming months, the compact plans to negotiate with Tennessee and other members of a similar Southeastern group on a new pact to stop shipping waste to Utah that don’t belong there.

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On the Net: Nuclear Regulatory Commission www.nrc.gov