I. OAK RIDGE Emergency
planning The
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee describes the Tennessee
Emergency Management Agency’s (TEMA’s) multi-jurisdictional plan for
handling emergencies at Oak Ridge as outdated.
The director of TEMA says that the plan is still a draft, and is in
the process of being updated.
A final plan should be released in the next month or two.
Among the deficiencies identified by the committee is inadequate
planning for “a massive attack by terrorists.” (Paul Parson, Oak Ridger,
9/13/01) Former
threat The
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York brought back memories
of the hijacking of a Southern Airways DC-9 in November 1972.
The three Americans who hijacked the plane after a stopover in
Birmingham, Alabama, threatened to force the pilots to crash the plane into
the Oak Ridge facilities. (One
of the hijackers had worked at Oak Ridge.)
They demanded $10 million “ransom.”
Promised $2 million, they forced the pilots to fly to Havana, where
the plane landed safely. (Frank Munger, Knoxville News-Sentinel, 9/14/01;
Duncan Mansfield, Associated Press, 9/19/01) Beryllium
case September
4, US District Judge James Jarvis dismissed a lawsuit brought by several
Y-12 workers against manufacturers and distributors of beryllium used at Oak
Ridge. The workers claimed they became ill from beryllium dust and fumes.
The judge ruled that “the government and its contractors were the
only parties in a position to warn the plaintiffs and protect them.”
Therefore, the manufacturers and distributors are not liable.
The decision is expected to impact nine similar cases brought by Y-12
or K-25 workers. (Laura Ayo,
Knoxville News-Sentinel, 9/7/01) Waste contract
Bechtel
Jacobs has awarded Duratek a three-year, $22 million subcontract for
performing the first phase of the decontamination and decommissioning of the
K-25/K-27 buildings. Duratek
will perform “hazardous materials abatement and waste management services
including packaging, transportation, and disposal of waste.” (Duratek
Press Release, 9/10/01) (See
also Advanced Technology) II. PADUCAH
Contaminated water
Wesley
Birge, a University of Kentucky biologist, has found PCB contamination in
fish in Big Bayou Creek, which flows through the Paducah plant and empties
into the Ohio River; and toxic-metal contamination in Big Bayou and Little
Bayou creeks around the plant. His
findings are presented in a report that he submitted to the Kentucky
Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Waste Management
August 29. The
PCB contamination is serious enough to require a warning against eating fish
from Big Bayou Creek, Birge states. Furthermore,
PCBs have become so widespread that nearly all wildlife living near the
plant has been contaminated. Birge,
who has studied streams near the plant for the state since 1987, believes
that contamination is spreading and has obtained approval to begin this fall
to look into how much PCB and metal contamination is entering the Ohio
River. DOE scientists disagree
with Birge’s findings. As of
October 3, the Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection
Cabinet was in the process of deciding whether to put up warnings about
fishing at Big Bayou Creek. (Michael
Clevenger and James R. Carroll, Courier-Journal, 9/8/01; M. Chamberlain,
Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet, Personal
Communication) Change
in leadership of PACE David
Fuller retired in September from his position as president of the Paper,
Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) Local 5-550.
A cascade operator and electrician, he headed the Paducah branch of
the union for ten years. Fuller is leaving USEC and plans to work in labor relations
with Bechtel Jacobs. (Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 9/25/01) (See
also Depleted Uranium) III.
PORTSMOUTH (See
Depleted Uranium) IV.
US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) Increase
in security measures Following
the attack on the World Trade Center September 11, DOE increased security at
Oak Ridge, Paducah and Portsmouth, as at other DOE installations.
Changes included allowing only employees and essential workers into
the plants and reducing the number of entrance points.
(Paul Parson, Oak Ridger, 9/13/01; UP, 9/12/01; Joshua Hickle,
Portsmouth Daily Times, 9/18/01) Waste
transportation September
11 DOE placed a moratorium on the shipment of low-level radioactive waste.
It lifted the moratorium the week of September 24. (Michael Janofsky,
New York Times, 9/27/01; Frank Munger, Knoxville News-Sentinel, 9/26/01) Worker
compensation Congressman
Ted Strickland (D, OH) wrote August 31 to Governor Bob Taft of Ohio to urge
his administration to respond positively to state workers’ compensation
claims from current and former employees at the Portsmouth plant who meet
federal requirements for the “Special Exposure Cohort.” The Cohort is composed of
people with certain types of illness who worked at specified sites,
including the enrichment plants, for a specified period of time. (Press
Release, Office of Ted Strickland, 8/31/01) (See
also Depleted Uranium) V.
USEC Trade
case September
5, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) published in the Federal
Register the notice of the final determination phase of the countervailing
duty and antidumping investigation on low-enriched uranium from Urenco and
Eurodif. The investigation was
prompted by charges from USEC . A
hearing on the final determination phase will be held November 28 and final
comments received until December 27. (Federal
Register, vol. 66, no. 172, pp. 46467-68,
9/5/2001) Megatons
to megawatts USEC
announced September 26 that it has now purchased 125 metric tons of
high-enriched uranium (HEU) from Russia, one quarter of the 500 tons
specified in the US-Russian HEU agreement.
The 500 tons are the equivalent of 5000 nuclear warheads. In Russia the
HEU, in the form of uranium hexafluoride, is diluted with low-enriched
uranium (LEU) to produce LEU and then packaged.
USEC takes possession of the filled containers in Saint Petersburg
and ships them to its Portsmouth plant.
There the LEU is tested and, if necessary, the enrichment is
adjusted. USEC then ships the LEU to fuel fabricators. USEC has not
placed any orders for uranium to be delivered in 2002, because it is
awaiting instructions from the Bush administration. (USEC Press Release,
9/26/01) Personal
property taxes The
Ohio Department of Taxation has notified USEC Inc. that it owes $13.3
million plus interest, in personal property tax for calendar years 1999 and
2000. USEC believes that the
inventories on which the tax is being levied are exempt from personal
property taxes in Ohio and has filed petitions for reassessment.
(Platt’s Nuclear News Flashes, 9/5/01) Contract USEC
has signed a contract with Arizona Public Service Co. according to which it
will supply up to one hundred percent of the enriched uranium for the Palo
Verde Nuclear Generating Station between October 1, 2003 and December 31,
2008. The contract includes
options for extensions. The
power station is composed of three units totaling 3810 megawatts. (USEC Press Release, 9/17/01) (See also Advanced Technology and Depleted Uranium) VI. ADVANCED
TECHNOLOGY
Options
for USEC In
its preliminary final report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2001, Silex
Systems Limited described the status of its uranium enrichment project,
which USEC funds. The current
stage of the development program, the Pilot Plant Engineering Study, has
involved designing and installing equipment at Silex’s Lucas Heights
Laboratories south of Sidney. Testing with the equipment will take place
during late 2001 and 2002. The
following stage, if USEC decides to proceed, will be the Pilot Plant Program
with the testing of plant-scale equipment.
The companies will consider using a Test Loop rather than a full
Pilot Plant at this stage. USEC
in its 2001 annual report states that during the past year, USEC and the
University of Tennessee-Battelle (the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
contractor), worked together at the East Tennessee Technology Park at Oak
Ridge under a DOE-approved Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (Crada)
to update earlier centrifuge designs and incorporate composite materials and
other technologies. The group
“has completed 90 percent of centrifuge rotor and end-cap design, which
are the most difficult and important components of the centrifuge. USEC is
ready to rapidly pursue demonstration” of this technology. (USEC Executive
Vice President Dennis Spurgeon noted in a speech October 2 at the Nuclear
Energy Institute’s Nuclear Fuel Conference that work under the Crada has
been entirely funded by USEC and that USEC is working with DOE to extend the
Crada.) USEC
is seeking guidance from the NRC as to regulatory requirements for
construction of a Silex Test Loop and of a lead centrifuge cascade at
Portsmouth. In a meeting with
NRC officials August 3 in regard to regulations, USEC officials said that
they expect to decide within a year which advanced technology(ies) they will
pursue. They believe that new enrichment facilities using either Silex or
centrifuges “could be ready by the end of the decade.”
(AAP Newsfeed, 9/6/01; Daniel Horner, Nuclear Fuel, 8/20/01; USEC,
2001 annual report; USEC Press Release, 9/2/01)
Urenco Urenco
reported that sales increased from 456 million euro in 1999 to 655 million
euro in 2000. In 1999 it
delivered just over 4 million SWU; in 2000, over 5 million.
Capacity at the end of 1999 was 4.4 million SWU; at the end of 2000,
4.8 million SWU. A
new enrichment company? Nuclear
Fuel has
reported that the administration is interested in encouraging US utilities
and others to form a new company to operate a centrifuge plant.
The company would lease centrifuge technology from Urenco.
Reportedly DOE officials met with Urenco officials in August to
confirm Urenco’s willingness to lease its technology. (Michael Knapik,
Nuclear Fuel, 8/20/01) France Anne
Lauvergeon, president of the directorate of the new French nuclear holding
company Areva, told the press September 3 that “Areva will have an
important investing capacity.” After
2010 it will make a major investment in the construction of Eurodif’s new
centrifuge enrichment plant, and it will make “geographic investments,”
for example in the United States. Eurodif now uses the gaseous diffusion
process at a facility that began industrial operation in 1982.
Areva, named after Arevalo, a Spanish Cistercian abbey, brings
together Cogéma, Framatome ANP, and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
[Agence France Presse, 9/3/01] VII.
DEPLETED URANIUM EIS
on conversion of depleted UF6 DOE
published in the Federal Register September 18 a notice of intent to prepare
an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) “for a proposal to construct,
operate, maintain, and decontaminate and decommission two depleted uranium
hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion facilities, at Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah,
Kentucky. DOE would use the
proposed facilities to convert its inventory of DUF6 to a more stable
chemical form suitable for storage, beneficial use, or disposal.”
The agency will hold public scoping meetings near Portsmouth (Nov.
1), Paducah (Nov. 6), and Oak Ridge (Nov. 8).
It also invites written remarks on the scope of the EIS, which should
be postmarked by November 26, 2001. They
should be sent to Kevin Shaw, US DOE, Office of Environmental Management,
Office of Site Closure—Oak Ridge office (EM-32), 19901 Germantown Road,
Germantown, MD 20874; by fax to 301-903-3479; or by e-mail to DUF6.Comments@em.doe.gov,
with NOI Comments for the subject. Despite
the opening sentence on intention, the notice in the Federal Register
includes under “Supplemental Information” a discussion of “Preliminary
Alternatives.” Here DOE
states that the preferred alternative is building plants at Paducah and
Portsmouth, but that, consistent with requirements of the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the EIS will consider other reasonable
alternatives, including building only one plant, using existing conversion
capacity “at commercial fuel fabrication facilities” (no facility has
expressed an interest, the notice states), and no action.
Rep. Ted Strickland (D, OH) wrote September 19 to DOE stating that
“Congress made it crystal clear in Public Law 105-204 (July 1998) that the
department of Energy is to construct two facilities,” one at Portsmouth
and the other at Paducah. DOE
anticipates awarding a contract for implementation of the DUF6 conversion project this fall. However, DOE expects to publish the draft EIS “by June
2002” and the final EIS “for January 2003.”
The contract will be made contingent on the completion of the NEPA
process “and will be
structured such that the NEPA process will be completed in advance of a
go/no-go decision.” Strickland points out that DOE’s Request for
Proposals called for construction of two plants.
(Federal Register, 9/18/01, vol. 66, no. 181, pp. 48123-27; Letter
from Ted Strickland to Jesse Roberson and Stephen Cary, 9/19/01) Enrichment
of tails USEC
is interested in enriching for foreign customers, uranium tails (the
depleted uranium that results from the enrichment process). This interest lies behind its asking the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) to determine the regulatory regime that would
apply to the importation of depleted uranium, in particular whether depleted
uranium must be treated as a waste (UEN, Sept. 01).
(As of 1998, France sent monthly a small percentage of the tails
produced by Eurodif, to Russia for enrichment, in part to prove that tails
are not a waste.) USEC’s
customer would be a small enricher, USEC manager Mario Robles explained at a
meeting with the NRC. Some
uranium producers fear that if American Conversion Services (USEC-CH2M Hill)
receives the contract to convert the depleted uranium at Oak Ridge, Paducah,
and Portsmouth, USEC will re-enrich the tails at these sites that have the
highest assay. Use of the Silex laser enrichment process would presumably
facilitate the enrichment of tails. (Daniel Horner, NuclearFuel, 9/3/010;
Michael Knapik and Elaine Hiruo, NuclearFuel, 9/3/01; NuclearFuel, 12/28/98) Depleted
uranium contamination at a French plant From
France comes a reminder that depleted uranium must be handled with care.
September 13, a non-profit laboratory, the Commission de Recherche et
d’Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité (Crii-Rad), held a
press conference to announce that during a rapid preliminary study of the
surroundings of the Sicn plant at Annecy it had found instances of
contamination. Sicn, a
subsidiary of the fuel-cycle giant Cogéma, makes objects from depleted
uranium for civilian and military uses.
Noting that the uranium that Sicn releases into the atmosphere can
concentrate in certain places like gutters to create deposits of
radioactive waste, Crii-Rad called for monitoring of gaseous
releases; a study of the groundwater (which monitoring by Sicn has shown to
be polluted with uranium); and a reduction in the amount of uranium that can
legally be released. The Crii-Rad carried out its survey at the request of
the Greens of Haute-Savoie. (www.criirad.com,
press release, 9/13/01; Agence France Presse, 9/13/01) |
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