I. OAK RIDGE VI. UNITED STATES ENRICHMENT CORPORATION I. OAK RIDGE Assessment of floodplain land February 6, the
US Department of Energy (DOE) sold to the Oak Ridge Land Co. 182 acres of
floodplain along the Clinch River for $54 an acre. The company had already purchased from the Boeing Co. for
development the adjacent 1200 acres of land, which DOE had sold to Boeing
for a missile project that was later cancelled.
The floodplain strip was part of the National Environmental Research
Park. It includes 69 acres of
wetlands and supports several state-listed threatened and endangered plant
species. The Tennessee Valley
Authority had formally asked DOE to convey the flood plain tract back to TVA
in order to protect it. When
conservation groups, who had tried to prevent the sale, protested the price,
they were told that the price represented “fair-market value” as
determined by an appraisal. Journalist Frank
Munger has tried to obtain a copy of the appraisal.
DOE’s Oak Ridge office told him that it did not have a copy, and
nobody in the office remembered who did the appraisal. DOE wrote to The Oak
Ridge Land for a copy but received no reply.
The chief manager of Oak Ridge Land, Michael Ross, told Munger that
the company did not have the appraisal.
Oak Ridge Land had asked the appraiser for a copy, but the appraiser
had not kept one. He said that
he could get it “through some kind of printing process,” Ross told
Munger; but the company
hadn’t asked him to do it. “’If it becomes a major issue, we
will’” (www.kornett.org/aforr
; Frank
Munger, [Knoxville] News-Sentinel, 4/25/01) Environmental
Management Waste Management Facility
(EMWMF) Construction
began April 19 on the EMWFM disposal cell in East Bear Creek Valley at the
Oak Ridge complex. The cell,
which is being constructed with natural and man-made materials, “is being
excavated into the site of a ridge.”
When the first phase is completed, the downhill side will rise about
100 feet above the current grade and will have the footprint of fifty-eight
football fields. The cell will
hold low-level radioactive waste, mixed waste, and wastes regulated under
the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Toxic Substances Control Act.
Examples include soil, sediments, and building debris.
(John Schlatter, Bechtel Jacobs 5/1/01)
Incinerator restart DOE’s Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) incinerator went back into operation in April after a four-month shutdown during which workers conducted maintenance and replaced the brick lining of the main kiln. The incinerator is now scheduled to burn about 1.4 million pounds of waste in the current fiscal year. DOE and its subcontractors are seeking new operating permits for the incinerator, and a test burn will be held in mid-May. IT Corp. operates the incinerator under a subcontract to Bechtel Jacobs. (Oak Ridger, 4/3/01; Paul Parson, Oak Ridger, 4/26/01) Preservation of K-25? The Citizens’
Advisory Panel of Oak Ridge Reservation’s Local Oversight Committee is
looking into ways to ensure the preservation of a portion of the K-25
process building for historical purposes. The building is not scheduled for
demolition until 2008, but Bechtel Jacobs, DOE’s environmental manager, is
expected to award a contract for asbestos removal and other activities in
June. Proposals for the
asbestos removal were due April 16. The
subcontract will include preliminary work on the smaller K-27 process
building. (Paul Parson,
Oak Ridger, 4/11/01; Weapons Complex Monitor, 3/26/01) Investigation
of water A public meeting
on Phase II of the investigation into water quality at Oak Ridge was held
April 9. Phase I of the investigation looked into the quality of the current
water supply at Oak Ridge; Phase II will look into past problems. At the
meeting several workers deplored the fact that project leaders are still
trying to determine whether cross connections allowed non-sanitary water to
mix with drinking water. The
workers believe that sufficient evidence to prove the cross connection has
been presented. Some workers
fear that a study financed by DOE will necessarily be biased. Parallax Inc. a
small company based in Maryland with experience working for DOE and
expertise in nuclear safety is managing Phase II. Others on the team include the JSI Center for Environmental
Health Studies, headed by Dr. Richard Bird; Malcolm Pirnie Inc., an
engineering firm, and TerraGraphics Environmental Engineering, Inc., which
has investigated other water systems. The project team is asking workers,
former workers, and community members with information to contact them. A
hot line has been set up at 865-481-8290.
(Frank Munger, News-Sentinel, 4/16/01; Paul Parson, Oak Ridger,
3/13/01) Annual
environmental report Copies of the
1999 Oak Ridge Annual Site Environmental Report, released earlier this year,
can be obtained by calling the Oak Ridge Information Resource Center,
865-241-4582. II PADUCAH An Engineering
Evaluation/Cost Analysis for Scrap Metal Disposition at the Paducah Gaseous
Diffusion Plant, released in March, evaluates alternatives for the removal
and disposition of 54,000 t of scrap metal and miscellaneous materials.
The materials are now stored in ten scrap yards, all except one in
the northwestern corner of the site. The
scrap includes processing equipment, piping, valves, and nickel ingots.
In the preferred alternative, materials would be sorted and disposed
of as appropriate. (Few details of what would go where are not supplied.)
Some materials might be contaminated and recycled.
Volumetrically contaminated nickel ingots would be put into interim
storage on site. (DOE/OR/07-1880&D2/R1) Report on health A new report by
the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a branch of the US
Department of Health and Human Services, states that people in the vicinity
of the Paducah plant may have been exposed to hazardous substances but that
“’those substances are not at levels which would cause illness.’”
Exposure to vinyl chloride, which may be produced when
trichloroethylene (TCE) breaks down in groundwater, and to uranium and
hydrogen fluoride released to the air are “indeterminate public health
hazards” because data to assess the risk are not available.
ATSDR conducted the study because Paducah is a Superfund site. A public meeting
to discuss the assessment is to be held May 1. The assessment is on the
agency Web site at www.atsdr.cdc.gov
. Comments will be received
until May 14. They should be
sent to the Chief, Program Evaluation, Records and Information Services
Branch, ATSDR, 1600 Clifton Road, NE, Mailstop E-56, Atlanta, GA 30333.
(Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 4/7/01; Paducah Sun, 4/25/01) Court cases The US Justice Department has filed a motion to dismiss a suit brought by several Kentucky landowners against the Atomic Energy Commission. The residents, represented by James W. Owens, seek compensation for damages to their land and for the cost of monitoring their health to identify problems caused by the Paducah plant. The Justice Department based the case for dismissal in part on the fact that the AEC no longer exists. (Michael Ravnitzky, National Journal, 4/16/01) US District
Judge Joseph McKinley has ruled that the Kentucky workers’ compensation
law prevents uranium plant workers from suing their own employers in a $10
billion lawsuit against former plant operators.
He did not, however, dismiss the case on the grounds of a one-year
statute of limitations. Workers
can pursue the case as long as they were not employed by the companies that
they are suing. The
companies against which claims have been brought are Union Carbide and
Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin), the plant’s two former
contractors, and outside contractors including General Electric and E.I. du
Pont de Nemours & Co. Judge
McKinley’s ruling does not apply to the whistle-blower lawsuit that led to
the Washington Post exposé of
contamination at the plant, because that suit was brought on different
grounds-- that plant operators conspired to defraud the government by
obtaining performance fees they did not earn. (James Malone, Courier
Journal, 4/17/01; Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 4/17/01) Technetium in Paducah UF6 “Sampling
conducted a few days before and after the implementation of higher assay
operations at Paducah has shown excess amounts of Technetium” in the
enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6). Technetium
99 was deposited in the enrichment cascade when the cascade handled recycled
uranium. Steps designed to put
an end to the increase are being implemented and assessed. Meanwhile, UF6 from Paducah that is found to be contaminated
with excess technetium goes through a trapping process at Portsmouth.
In other respects the “assay ascension [is] proceeding as expected
and on schedule.” (Inside P: Paducah Plant News & Info Source,
published by USEC, 04/18/01) III PORTSMOUTH Annual environmental report DOE has issued the Portsmouth Annual Environmental Report for 1999, prepared by the agency’s environmental management and integration contractor Bechtel Jacobs Company. The report does not cover USEC’s activities at the site. It indicates that DOE did not exceed any of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit limits; did not violate air permits or National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants; and did not make any unplanned releases of hazardous substances that required reporting under environmental regulations. The report is published in two volumes: a summary and a detailed data report. Both can be obtained from the DOE’s Environmental Information Center (740-289-3317). Job cuts and funding April 2, in
compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act
(WARN), USEC notified employees that it anticipated laying off approximately
526 workers at the Portsmouth facility, because of the cessation of
enrichment operations there. Of
the 526, approximately 230 would be salaried employees and approximately
296, employees who are represented by the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical
and Energy (PACE) Workers International Union.
USEC planned to
announce staffing of the Portsmouth Transfer and Shipping/Cold
Standby/Deposit Remediation organization April 12. The company postponed the announcement because reviews to
ensure equity had taken longer than expected and because it was no longer
clear that DOE would fund deposit remediation, ie removing uranium deposits
from the cascade. If the
remediation were not funded, 170 additional employees would lose their jobs.
After lobbying
by Governor Bob Taft, Senator Mike DeWine, and Congressman Ted Strickland,
DOE agreed to provide $5 million for deposit remediation.
(The $5 million will be in addition to $125.7 million that Energy
Secretary Abraham promised March 1 for winterization, cold standby, and
worker transition.) USEC subsequently decided to begin to give out layoff
notices and job offers April 23. (USEC
Press Release, 4/2/01; Memo from General Manager Pat Musser, 4/12/01; Press
Releases from Gov. Taft and from Mike DeWine and Ted Strickland, 4/19/01) Huntington
Pilot Plant DOE’s recent
listing of the Huntington Pilot Plant in West Virginia among the facilities
from which workers are eligible for the nuclear workers’ health
compensation program has put
the plant in the spotlight. The
Pilot Plant was on the grounds of what is now the Special Metals plant, but
was formerly owned by Inco. Ltd. The
Pilot Plant produced nickel carbonyl powder, which was shipped to Oak Ridge
and also, reportedly, “decontaminated scrap from uranium plants” and
recycled scrap. The remains of the nickel plant are buried in the X-749A
landfill at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
(Jim Ross, [Huntington] Herald-Dispatch, 4/20/01 and 4/21/01; DOE,
Independent Investigation of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, May
2000) Cold standby
contract for USEC The Platts Web
site reported April 20 that DOE was preparing to employ USEC to keep the
Portsmouth plant in ‘cold standby’ condition after the plant ceases
operations in June. The initial contract with USEC would be for two years,
but DOE has told USEC that it will consider USEC for additional work.
The agency chose USEC in part because of
USEC’s “’unique position . . .
to maintain the current NRC certificate for operations.’” (www.platts.com) IV US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) DOE Budget The US Senate budget resolution, passed April 6, calls for $1 billion more for environmental cleanup at DOE facilities than the Bush administration has requested. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and a few other senators proposed the increase. (James R. Carroll, Courier Journal, 4/7/01) The detailed budget for fiscal year (FY) 2002, released by the Bush administration April 9, would, if enacted, cut expenditures for environmental programs across the DOE complex by more than $400 million, although it would increase by $231 million (to $5.3 billion) funding for nuclear weapons research. Not all sites fared equally in the environmental management allocations. The FY 2002 request for the East Tennessee Technology Park (the K-25 site) at Oak Ridge is $101,818, 000 down from the FY 2001 comparable appropriation of $151,497,000. For Paducah the FY 2002 request is $72,982,000, down from an appropriation of $86,505,000 for 2001. For Portsmouth the FY 2002 request of $201,096,000 represents a major increase over the FY 2001 appropriation of $87,861,000 due to the administration’s decision to provide $125.7 million for winterization, cleanup, and cold standby. (Apparently $59 million for these areas in FY 2001 was taken from the existing FY 2001 environmental management allocation. The environmental management allocation for FY 2002 will cover $66.7 million for FY 2002 transition activities and $59 million for repayment to the programs from which money for transition activities was taken in FY 2001.) Members of Congress representing the Paducah site have vowed to increase the funding for Paducah. In the Defense Environmental Management Privatization Budget, Oak Ridge was allocated $26 million for the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility, Paducah $13.3 million for a planned Paducah Disposal Facility, and Portsmouth $2 million for a planned Portsmouth Disposal Facility. Under a privatization contract, the contractor funds construction of a facility and is paid only after the facility is in operation. (Alliance for Nuclear Accountability Press Release, 4/9/01; FY 2002 Congressional Request available on www.doe.gov ; Bill Bartleman, Paducah Sun, 4/10/01) Compensation
for nuclear weapons workers Labor Secretary Elaine Chao announced April 18 that she had told the White House that she agreed to the Labor Department’s administering the health compensation program for nuclear weapons workers. Her attempt to shift the administration of the program to the Justice Department had been severely criticized by nuclear workers members of Congress, particularly those from states with nuclear weapons sites. Chao has said that her staff cannot meet the July 31 deadline for accepting applications for compensation and will seek an extension of the deadline from Congress but that medical benefits will be made retroactive to July 31. She has also said that she would like changes in the way rejected claims can be appealed. She would prefer that appeals be settled by administrative review rather than by applicants’ going to court. (Memo to the DOL Team, 4/18/01; Associated Press, 4/18/01) The Web page of
DOE’s Office of Worker Advocacy, with information on the compensation
program, is now at: http://tis.eh.doe.gov/advocacy/index.html
. The Energy Department has a toll-free information
line on the program: 877-447-9756. Review of compliance agreements April 4, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham sent letters to EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and to the governors of states with DOE facilities, saying that the cleanup compliance agreements that are the basis of DOE’s Environmental Management program may be outdated and in need of change. He cited, as reasons for modifying the agreements, the development of new cleanup technologies, completion of waste characterization programs, and the acquisition of experience with cleanup approaches. Carolyn Huntoon, acting assistant secretary for environmental management, will lead a review of “ways to improve the compliance framework.” Abraham seeks input on the review from the EPA and the governors. (Weapons Complex Monitor, 4/23/01) Weapons sites as wilderness The Competitive
Enterprise Institute has released “From Waste to Wilderness: Maintaining
Biodiversity on Nuclear-Bomb-Building Sites,” a report proposing that the
federal government “abandon the current nuclear-cleanup program [at DOE
sites] as economically wasteful and environmentally counterproductive.”
The government could set the DOE sites aside as wildlife habitat
instead of imposing “new federal measures to ‘lock up’ additional
multiple-use land elsewhere.” The report thus dovetails with the views of
the current administration on public lands as well as with its desire to
reduce spending on cleanup. Certainly
many DOE sites are rich from the point of view of biodiversity, but other
aspects of the report are controversial.
Robert H. Nelson, the report’s author, takes the position that
humans need an environment that is relatively free from radiation; but
wildlife does not, a stand with which many biologists, taking a long-term
view, would disagree. Nelson also takes the position that sources of on-site
radiation that would impact humans offsite can be contained without the
“current nuclear-cleanup program.”
Water pollution is not so easily confined.
Susan Gawarecki of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight
Committee, reflects the view of many citizens. Nelson’s proposal is not
realistic, she says. “I have seen the problems out there.” “It’s got
to be dealt with.” ( www.cei.org
; Paul Parson, Oak Ridger Online, 4/10/01) Card nomination President Bush has chosen Robert Card for DOE undersecretary. Card was president and CEO of Kaiser-Hill Company from 1996 until April of this year and is still a senior vice president of the firm. Kaiser-Hill is in charge of cleanup at the mothballed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production site. While Card led Kaiser-Hill, the firm was fined or penalized more than $725,000 for various violations, but its safety record improved yearly. Card is also a senior vice president, board member, and shareholder of CH2M Hill, which owns 50% of Kaiser-Hill. (Josey Ballenger, Center for Public Integrity, 4/25/01) CH2M Hill and USEC have together formed American Conversion Services, which recently bid for the contract to convert depleted uranium hexafluoride stored at the gaseous diffusion plants. V US NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC) Recertification procedure The NRC has made changes to the draft report, NUREG-1671, retitled Standard Review Plan for the Recertification of the Gaseous Diffusion Plants. It is currently offering the public the opportunity to comment on Section 14.0, Decommissioning Fund Plan and Financial Assurance Mechanisms, and on an introduction to be added to the draft report. A strikeout version of Section 14.0 and the introduction can be found at www.nrc.gov/NRC/NUREGS/SR1671/REVISED/index.html . Comments should be submitted by May 25 to the Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, US NRC, Washington, DC 20555-0001. VI UNITED STATES ENRICHMENT CORPORATION (USEC) License for transport packs USEC has granted
Columbiana Boiler Company (CBC) an exclusive license to manufacture and sell
worldwide the MED 2000 overpack for transporting sample cylinders of UF6.
The MED 2000, designed by USEC, is the “only package that fully
complies with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s new requirements
for UF6 shipments,” a company spokesperson reports.
USEC will receive a license fee for each overpack sold.
CBC will manufacture the packs in Columbiana, Ohio. (USEC Press
Release, 4/23/01) Worker suits Six former USEC
employees at the Paducah plant have filed federal and state suits in which
they charge that the company terminated their jobs in order to avoid having
to pay them full pensions. They
were replaced, they contend, with younger workers who had had much less
experience. Eight other workers
who lost their jobs at Paducah have filed a state suit that charges USEC
with sex, age, and racial discrimination and sexual harassment. USEC
spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle says that USEC developed a very thorough and
fair process for deciding who would be affected by job cuts. (Associated
Press, 04/12/01) USEC stock USEC stock has
recently been among the best performers on the market.
Although the value of the stock fell sharply during the first
eighteen months after USEC’s privatization (from $14.25 to $3.44 a share),
the stock has almost doubled in price since the beginning of last year and
was at around $8.50 in late April. It was among the twenty best-performing members in the
Russell 2000 index, which ranks shares of smaller companies. Irving Kahn, chairman of Kahn Brothers & Co., an
investment firm that owns USEC shares, sees several possible reasons for the
advance: the likelihood that USEC will be able to discontinue paying
above-market prices for uranium from Russian warheads, the possibility that
USEC will attract takeover bids, and the fact that the company will benefit
if a decision by the US Commerce Department that Eurodif and Urenco are
“dumping” uranium in this country results in the levying of duties
against the Europeans. At the time that USEC was privatized several
companies were interested in acquiring USEC, including Lockheed Martin.
(David Wilson, Bloomberg.com , 4/11/01; The Economist, 4/27/01) Defense
against hostile takeover The USEC board
of directors has adopted a Shareholder Rights Plan, which is designed to
help prevent a hostile takeover after July 28, when the legal restriction on
anyone’s owning more than 10% of the company’s common stock expires.
If a person or group obtains 15% or more of USEC’s common stock,
each shareholder of record on May 9, 2001, will be able to buy additional
shares of common stock at a 50% discount from the market price.
The plan would greatly increase the cost of carrying out a hostile
takeover. (USEC Press Release, 4/24/01) Third quarter
finances April 24 the
board of directors declared a dividend of 13.75 cents a share on common
stock. April 25 USEC
reported operating earnings for its third quarter ending March 31 of $8.1
million, or $.10 per share. Operating
earnings in the third quarter of the previous fiscal year were $22.6 million
or $.25 per share. Not taking
into account a special tax credit, USEC earned $33.7 million or $.42 a share
in the nine months ending March 31. These figures compare to $71.3 million
or $.77 a share for the same period the previous year. USEC anticipates
earnings for the year to be approximately $35 to $40 million, before special
items. These results would
exceed the previous guidance of $30 to $35 million.
Lower costs and lower net interest expense have led to better than
expected financial performance. Revenue for the third quarter totaled $243.1 million as compared to $281.8 million for the third quarter of the previous fiscal year. For the first nine months of the fiscal year revenue was $857.0 million, an 11 percent decline, from $960.3 million, for the first nine months of the previous fiscal year. The decline was caused by sales of a lower volume of separative work units (SWU) at lower average prices. Sales of SWU accounted for 93 percent of revenue. Revenue from the sale of natural uranium in the first nine months of FY 2001 amounted to $60.4 million, which compares to $44.9 million for the same period in the previous fiscal year. Megatons to
Megawatts USEC submitted a
report on the Implementation of the
Russian HEU Purchase Program to the US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee for a hearing on DOE nonproliferation programs with Russia March
28. The company pointed out that as executive agent for the program, it had
made possible the use in civilian reactors of 113 metric tons of Russian
highly enriched uranium (HEU), the equivalent of more than 4500 nuclear
weapons and thus “enough nuclear explosives to destroy every large city in
the world.” The program is
40% ahead of the original 1993, 20-year schedule for conversion of 500
metric tons of HEU; and USEC and the Russian executive agent Techsnabexport
enjoy a “strong, flexible, responsive and cooperative working
relationship,” the report stated. (USEC Press Release, 4/3/01; USEC,
Implementation . . . , 3/28/01) In a letter of April 12 to Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, USEC Senior Vice President Philip Sewell said that “’appointment of additional executive agents would destabilize the economics’” of the US-Russian HEU deal and “compromise the highly cooperation relationship with our Russian counterparts.” Dissenting views The Ad Hoc Utilities Group, which formed to protest USEC’s antidumping and countervailing duty actions against Eurodif and Urenco, sent a letter to Rep. Barton April 26 in response to USEC’s letter. Stephan E. Becker of Shaw Pittman, Counsel to the Group, stated that the actions against European enrichment providers could, if USEC succeeds in obtaining duties, give USEC a monopoly and “significantly impact ratepayers and the future competitiveness of nuclear power.” The Group “disagrees with USEC’s claims that the appointment of additional Executive Agents would destabilize the economics of the HEU deal." Additional executive agents would mean that USEC could rely less on importations from Russia to satisfy customer demand and would be prompted to increase its domestic production. The Group doubts that USEC can put a new technology into industrial service, before it has to retire the Paducah plant. Therefore, a domestic source of enriched uranium can be best assured by “construction of a new plant by the private sector using commercially proven centrifuge technology.” Utilities in the Group include Exelon, Entergy, Duke Energy, and Southern Nuclear. The
Group’s views paralleled those expressed by John R. Longenecker in
testimony before the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality March 27.
Longenecker, former deputy assistant secretary and first
“transition manager” of USEC, recommended that the US government
consider appointing a second executive agent for the HEU deal.
He advised that the government consider not allowing USEC to keep all
the profits from the trade engendered by the US-Russian agreement.
In addition, he warned against the possible results of the
anti-dumping action brought by USEC. (www.nuke-energy.com,
4/2/01) |
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