Uranium Mines Dot Navajo Land, Neglected and Still Perilous

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Sunday, April 01, 2012

Uranium Mines Dot Navajo Land, Neglected and Still Perilous

By LESLIE MACMILLAN

CAMERON, Ariz. — In the summer of 2010, a Navajo cattle rancher named Larry Gordy stumbled upon an abandoned uranium mine in the middle of his grazing land and figured he had better call in the feds. Engineers from the Environmental Protection Agency arrived a few months later, Geiger counters in hand, and found radioactivity levels that buried the needles on their equipment.

The abandoned mine here, about 60 miles east of the Grand Canyon, joins the list of hundreds of such sites identified across the 27,000 square miles of Navajo territory in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico that are the legacy of shoddy mining practices and federal neglect. From the 1940s through the 1980s, the mines supplied critical materials to the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

For years, unsuspecting Navajos inhaled radioactive dust and drank contaminated well water. Many of them became sick with cancer and other diseases.

The radioactivity at the former mine is said to measure one million counts per minute, translating to a human dose that scientists say can lead directly to malignant tumors and other serious health damage, according to Lee Greer, a biologist at La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif. Two days of exposure at the Cameron site would expose a person to more external radiation than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers safe for an entire year.

The E.P.A. filed a report on the rancher’s find early last year and pledged to continue its environmental review. But there are still no warning signs or fencing around the secluded and decaying site. Crushed beer cans and spent shell casings dot the ground, revealing that the old mine has become a sort of toxic playground.

News Release from EPA Region 6

EPA Proposes to Add Cibola County Mine

to National Priorities List of Superfund Sites

Nine hazardous waste sites added, 10 proposed

(DALLAS – March 13, 2012) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine in Laguna Pueblo has been proposed to be added to the National Priorities List (NPL) of Superfund sites, a list of sites that pose risks to people’s health and the environment. Superfund is the federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country.

About 40 miles west of Albuquerque in Cibola County, the mine lies in an area of canyons and arroyos near the village of Paguate. Anaconda Minerals Company operated the 7,868-acre site from 1953 to 1982, leaving open pits, waste dumps, and ore stockpiles. Contaminants found at the site include uranium, arsenic, barium, chromium, and lead. While previous attempts clean up the site have been made, an assessment in 2007 determined these were not enough.

“Today we’re taking an important step toward restoring contaminated property and protecting people’s health and our environment,” said EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz. “Cleaning up hazardous waste in our communities and returning properties to environmental and economic vitality are EPA priorities.”

The nearby Rio Paguate and Paguate Reservoir have shown elevated levels of isotopic uranium, which could affect cultural and ceremonial uses of these water bodies. Although the site had undergone reclamation previously, a 2007 report concluded that effort left several issues unaddressed.          

The EPA will seek public comment on adding the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine site to the NPL for 60 days. Comments will be considered as the agency completes the final decision process.

Since 1983, 1,661 sites have been listed on the NPL. Of these sites, 359 have been cleaned up resulting in 1,302 sites currently on the NPL (including the nine sites added today). There are 62 proposed sites (including the 10 announced today) awaiting final agency action.

With all NPL sites, the EPA works to identify companies or people responsible for the contamination at a site, and requires them to conduct or pay for the cleanup. For the newly listed sites without viable potentially responsible parties, the EPA will investigate the full extent of the contamination before starting significant cleanup at the site. Therefore, it may be several years before significant EPA cleanup funding is required for these sites.

More information on the Superfund NPL is available at http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/current.htm

More about activities in EPA Region 6 is available at http://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/region6.html

EPA audio file is available at http://www.epa.gov/region6/6xa/podcast/mar2012.html

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Savannah River Site's H Canyon

From the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Office of Environmental Management:

Savannah River Site’s H Canyon Begins 2012 with New and Continuing Missions

Transuranic waste remediation, new mission work are the focus of the nation’s only active nuclear chemical separations facility in 2012

AIKEN, S.C. – The Savannah River Site (SRS) is breathing new life into the H Canyon, the only active nuclear chemical separations facility still operating in the U.S.

“After a history of primarily dissolving and separating materials found in irradiated reactor fuel rods, H Canyon continues to diversify its scope of work,” said DOE Savannah River Operations Office Manager David Moody. “H Canyon is a huge and dynamic production facility that continues to service the nation’s nuclear needs and does it safely.  It is one of the key facilities in the site’s Enterprise SRS strategic vision.”

Enterprise SRS is an initiative launched last year to transform past environmental liabilities into revitalized assets for future use, including national security, clean energy development, and environmental management.

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H Canyon, above, and HB-Line are scheduled to soon begin dissolving and purifying plutonium currently stored at the Savannah River Site to demonstrate the capability to produce oxide material that meets the Mixed Oxide Facility (MOX) feedstock specifications. The production process at MOX, which is now under construction, will eventually create fuel pellets for U.S. commercial reactor fuel assemblies.

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New Mission for H Canyon

Excess plutonium in the U.S. has been consolidated at SRS and is currently stored within a highly secure structure at the site. This plutonium will eventually be processed at the site’s Mixed Oxide Facility (MOX), which is currently under construction. The MOX production process will remove impurities from the stored plutonium and mix it with uranium oxide to form MOX fuel pellets for reactor fuel assemblies. When operational, this facility will be capable of turning 3.5 metric tons of plutonium into reactor fuel assemblies annually. Studies are underway to determine the optimum means to supply the feedstock to the MOX.

According to Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) H Canyon Facility Manager Mike Lewczyk, H Canyon and HB-Line, which is a sister facility also located in H Area, are scheduled to soon begin dissolving and purifying a quantity of the stored plutonium to demonstrate the capability of producing oxide material that meets MOX feedstock specifications. This new mission for H Canyon, once under way, will produce approximately one metric ton of acceptable plutonium oxide annually after an initial two-year period during which production levels increase. The scope of this mission is expected to be completed in five years and will provide the initial feedstock for MOX. SRNS is the management and operations contractor at SRS.

Increasing H Canyon’s Ability to Process Transuranic Waste

H Canyon is also scheduled to implement a revision to its Documented Safety Analysis to allow the handling and remediation of transuranic (TRU) waste with higher plutonium content than currently permitted in the H Canyon TRU Waste Program. “This revision will significantly increase the number of waste containers we can process in H Canyon, allowing the Savannah River Site to complete this task sooner than originally expected,” said Lewczyk.

The H Canyon TRU work is scheduled for completion by the end of 2012. 

Ensuring Unused Process Lines are Viable for Future Use

Throughout 2012, H Canyon personnel will conduct tests to ensure the major operating systems within production lines formerly used to dissolve and separate nuclear materials run efficiently. These efforts will maintain employee proficiency and keep equipment viable for future missions in the event the production lines are again used to process used fuel or other nuclear materials.

H Canyon History

H Canyon was constructed in the early 1950s and began operations in 1955. The interior of the building resembles a canyon; the processing areas are similar to a gorge in a deep valley between steep, vertical cliffs. It is 1,028 feet long, 122 feet wide and 71 feet tall, with several levels to accommodate the various stages of material stabilization, including control rooms to monitor equipment and operating processes and unique overhead bridge cranes.

Those cranes are used to conduct work remotely to minimize radiation exposure. The thick concrete walls that separate workers from the processing areas provide added protection.

In past operations, H Canyon was used to recover uranium-235 (U-235) and neptunium-237 (Np-237) from aluminum-clad, enriched-uranium fuel tubes of the site nuclear reactors and other domestic and foreign research reactors through a chemical separations process. SRS also recovered Np-237 and plutonium-238 (Pu-238) from special irradiated targets at the facility. Pu-238 was produced by irradiating recovered Np-237 from SRS nuclear reactors that are no longer operational. Pu-238 was then recovered and used in 30 of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s deep space exploration programs, such as the Cassini spacecraft.

From the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management, EM Update, Vol. 4, Issue 1, January 2012

Oak Ridge Lays Out Big Plans for 2012

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – Last year, Oak Ridge’s Environmental Management (EM) program logged one of its most successful years due to sound project management and achievements in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act work.

Oak Ridge plans to maintain that momentum in 2012, and the year is off to a great start. EM employees are making considerable progress on Oak Ridge’s largest projects, specifically the K-25 Demolition Project and Uranium-233 Disposition Project. 

“Our employees laid an excellent foundation last year through the Recovery Act and cooperation with our newly selected prime contractor, URS | CH2M Oak Ridge,” said Sue Cange, acting assistant manager for EM in Oak Ridge. “Those efforts have set the stage for an ambitious year, allowing us to make substantial gains in our work to meet requirements with regulators, protection of the environment, and furthering DOE’s other missions onsite.”

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Employees at Oak Ridge are accelerating work at K-25’s East Wing. Sixty percent of the remaining structure is expected to be down by the end of the September. 

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Currently, Oak Ridge’s EM program has a list of 40 active projects with a wide range of scopes and complexity. At the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), employees are removing K-25’s East Wing more rapidly than anticipated, with 26 percent of the 796,000-square-foot structure down and 60 percent planned for demolition by the end of September. Built as part of World War II’s Manhattan Project, K-25 housed the world’s first gaseous diffusion plant for enriching uranium.

EM is making progress finalizing the K-25 site’s historic preservation plans, which have been under negotiation since 2006. A final agreement is expected this spring.

Also at ETTP, pre-demolition work is scheduled to begin shortly in Building K-27. The eventual removal of this highly contaminated, 383,000-square-foot former gaseous diffusion facility will substantially eliminate risks and free millions of dollars in security and maintenance costs for cleanup elsewhere.

At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), employees removed the 4,000-gallon Tank W-1A this month. The tank, located in ORNL’s central campus, was the greatest source of groundwater contamination at the site. From 1951 until 1986, the tank collected and stored liquid waste from radiochemical separations and high-radiation facilities at ORNL, until significant levels of soil and groundwater contamination were traced to the vessel. Currently, employees are removing the surrounding contaminated soils. The project is expected to be complete this summer in accordance with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) milestone.

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Tank W-1A, a 4,000-gallon contaminated tank buried in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s central campus, was removed from the site in January.

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Also at ORNL, Oak Ridge’s EM program is advancing the Uranium-233 Disposition Project. In late December, the first shipment of inventory from Building 3019 was sent offsite, marking the beginning of the end for the world’s oldest operating nuclear facility. The first phase of shipments is expected to be complete during the next six to nine months.

 At the Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12), workers continue performing the second round of Recovery Act projects made possible through savings from previous Recovery Act projects. This second round of projects is directed toward mercury mitigation. For example, EM workers are developing an absorption unit to capture and treat mercury-tainted water from a location that is one of the main contributing factors of mercury entering the Upper East Fork Poplar Creek.  

EM is making headway on its National Priorities List (NPL) Site Boundary Delineation Project, which is in the final stages of characterizing 16,000 acres within the Oak Ridge Reservation. When complete, the uncontaminated areas will be removed from the existing NPL. The list, maintained by the EPA, contains sites with known or threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants.

Once areas are removed from the list, they can be approved for a greater range of new development and reuse activities. Most water and soil samples have been analyzed and validated, with the final two samples scheduled for completion this month. The overall project remains on schedule to meet a Sept. 30 milestone with TDEC and the EPA.