XI. ALSO OF INTEREST

On the evening of September 5, a night shift employee of British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) disrupted the electricity supply within the K-25 building by pushing a live 480-volt lead wire into a metal coupling. He was not hurt and no equipment was damaged, but workers were sent home Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. A committee formed to investigate the accident found "several areas that needed to be corrected in the electrical power distribution system." Employees were assigned to fix the problems. (Paul Parson, Oak Ridger, 9/7/00)

DOE has awarded IT Corp. a $11.1 million contract to excavate the 1070-A burial yard, which is contaminating groundwater. The one-acre site, which contains 62 pits and 26 trenches, received waste from uranium enrichment processes and other activities at the K-25 site from the 1950s until 1976. The wastes and contaminated soil, about 20,000 cubic yards in all, will be taken to a new landfill to be constructed in East Bear Creek Valley, elsewhere on the Oak Ridge site. Contaminants include uranium compounds, technetium 99, and small amounts of plutonium and thorium. (Frank Munger, Knoxville News-Sentinel, 9/14/00)

An audit of the cleanup operations being conducted by BNFL at the K-25 plant shows that the project is behind schedule and over budget. The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) inspector general Gregory Friedman reported in a memo of September 12 to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson that "As of March 2000, BNFL had incurred 61 percent of the costs associated with the current value of its contract, but it had completed only 14 percent of the project." The contract, signed in 1997, originally totaled $238 million. Adjustments to include some waste-disposal activities brought it to $250 million. Friedman estimates that the project will actually cost a total of $344 million, and that "completion is at least two years behind schedule." BNFL spokesperson Norman Hammitt says that the report takes into account neither corrective steps taken by BNFL during the past year nor commitments to Congress at a July 2000 hearing. The work turned out to be more difficult than BNFL had foreseen, because the buildings were older and more contaminated than expected, he explained. (Associated Press in Oak Ridger Online, 9/20/00)

The drinking water samples taken in August at the K-25 site by the Sampling Planning and Oversight Team (Spot) revealed no bacteriological, chemical or radiological contamination above the level permitted by the state and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Spot was composed of representatives of DOE, which organized the tests, the contractor for the water system at K-25 (OMI); the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee; the Paper, Allied-Industrial and Chemical Employees Union; the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee’s Citizen Advisory Panel; the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation; and Bechtel Jacobs. The report acknowledges that in the past there have been some "suspected and confirmed" cases of cross-connections between K-25’s drinking water and wastewater and other water systems. An ongoing review of the system is being conducted . Critics of the testing said that it should have been conducted by an independent agency and noted that DOE admitted that a cooler of water samples was lost in transit. (Paul Parson, Oak Ridger, 9/20/00)

September 25 Dr. Owen Hoffman, an expert in radiation dose assessments told a forum sponsored by Save Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM) that residents of the Oak Ridge area need to be given additional information about their past exposure to radioactive iodine and to have the risks explained to them. He noted that parts of the work that he and his staff did for the Oak Ridge Health Studies Project were left out of the project’s final report. The study was organized by the state of Tennessee. Hoffman also spoke to the Scarboro Community Environmental Justice Committee. (Frank Munger, Knoxville News-Sentinel, 9/26/00)

II PADUCAH

September 5 the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Waste Management issued a notice of violation to DOE in regard to some 150 DOE Material Storage Areas (DMSAs) at the Paducah site that the state says illegally store hazardous materials (see UEN, May and June 2000). According to the state, DOE did not characterize the waste or report the areas to the state. State regulations provide for fines of up to $25,000 a day for each hazardous waste violation. The Division of Waste Management has told DOE to develop a compliance plan by October 23, and DOE has taken steps to inventory the sites, which contain almost one million cubic feet of waste and scrap. Earlier in the year USEC staff reviewed for DOE the sites that apparently presented the greatest criticality risk. (James Malone, Courier Journal, 9/23/00; Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 9/23/00)

DOE is planning to have an underground wall constructed as a test of whether such walls could be used on a large scale at the Paducah plant to stop the spread of contamination through the groundwater. The test wall will be located across a zone of high contamination within the Southwest Plume, and will be composed of iron filings and guar gum (a food additive). DOE anticipates that the wall will capture technetium 99 and convert trichloroethylene (TCE) to harmless compounds. The test wall will be 100 feet long, 70 feet high, and about 4 inches thick, and will be placed 50 to 120 feet below the surface of the ground. Construction is scheduled to start in October.

The Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists (RACE) has sued DOE in US District Court to stop the project's going ahead without additional study. Plaintiffs are two members of RACE, Ronald Lamb and Mark Donham. They charge that the project has the potential for releasing pollutants into the Ohio River and contaminating soils and water and that DOE has not conducted the studies required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The method has never been used at the depths planned for Paducah and not for removal of radioactivity from groundwater, they say. On at least the first point, the Kentucky Division of Waste Management agrees with them. Construction "will be challenging," an article from the division notes. (James Malone, Louisville Courier Journal, 9/12/00; Tod Mullins, Kentucky Environmental Oversight News, 7/00)

The last of the scrap metal in Drum Mountain has been packed in containers for shipment to Envirocare in Utah, but Drum Mountain represented only about ten percent of the scrap metal at the Paducah site. DOE hopes to begin removal of the other ninety percent in the summer of 2000. An Engineering Evaluation and Cost Analysis of disposal of this scrap was to be completed in September, but, according to the project manager, completion has been delayed for sixty days to allow time to incorporate comments from state and federal regulators. Investigation of the ground under Drum Mountain, where drums of waste are reportedly buried, is scheduled to begin in 2002. (Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 9/15/00)

PACRO is considering employing CVD, a Canadian company that specializes in what it terms Metal Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition of nickel and other metals, to decontaminate radioactive nickel and sell it for restricted use. DOE personnel and two representatives of PACRO were to travel to Toronto September 25 to visit the plant. The project is controversial, because DOE has a moratorium on the sale of potentially contaminated scrap from its facilities, and because federal lawsuits charge that the 9700 tons of nickel stored at Paducah are highly radioactive. Also, views differ as to what entity would receive proceeds from any sale of the nickel (see UEN, Sept. 2000). At its September meeting PACRO discussed the CVD project and approved a $750,000 grant towards construction of a "speculative building on ten acres in Industrial Park West." (Associated Press on www.tennessean.com ; www.nvd.com/company.html )

The office of Kentucky's attorney general released an opinion September 7 to the effect that PACRO improperly withheld from the Courier Journal a letter in which a DOE lawyer gave Jimmie Hodges, DOE's former site manager at Paducah, guidelines for working for ELR, a company that subsequently won from PACRO a contract to find ways to sell radioactive nickel. PACRO subsequently furnished the letter to the newspaper. (James Malone, Courier Journal, 9/8/00)

Congressman Ted Strickland met in August with some ten current and former workers involved with cleanup at Portsmouth who charged that Bechtel Jacobs and subcontractors neglect necessary steps in regard to safety and that workers who report problems are harassed. One worker, Phil Borris, told the Columbus Dispatch that he was demoted when he asked Bechtel Jacobs to buy monitoring equipment. Strickland has written to Secretary Richardson asking if the August 22 accident in which a worker was severely burned is related to the safety problems about which he has been hearing. Leah Dever of DOE's Oak Ridge office, which oversees the cleanup at Piketon, said that, because of many employee complaints, the department will send a representative to Portsmouth and will hire an outside company to evaluate the conduct of DOE, Bechtel Jacobs, and its subcontractors. Bechtel Jacobs pointed out that the injured worker was employed by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory subcontractor. The firm claims that Bechtel Jacobs has "a very active employee concerns program." (Jonathan Riskind, Columbus Dispatch, 9/4/00)

DOE held one of its semi-annual public meetings in regard to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant at Piketon September 19. Topics covered included investigations, FY 2000 current activities, FY 2001 planned activities, and the schedule for completing environmental cleanup at the site.

Investigation of the accident at the X_701B area (see UEN September) was still in process, and the burned worker remained in "serious condition." DOE has issued a Corrective Action Plan in response to the investigation conducted by its Office of Oversight from January through March of this year. Corrective actions include enhanced air monitoring and "accelerated installation of additional monitoring wells to verify barrier wall effectiveness." (The wall in question is designed to stop groundwater contamination under the plant from moving off site. At the time of the investigation, no down-gradient sampling to determine the barrier's effectiveness in keeping the contamination on site had occurred since 1995.)

FY 2000 accomplishments that DOE presented included completing the capping of the last of the site's former landfills, the X-734 Landfill; dispatch of more than 6 million pounds of chromium sludge to Envirocare in Utah for disposal; and commencement of a Sitewide Environmental Assessment (EA) for reindustrialization (the draft is expected to be ready for public review by November).

Activities announced for FY 2001 include completing all quadrant Corrective Measures Studies; upgrading the X-622 Groundwater Treatment Facility; deploying remedial treatment methods at two other plume areas; and disposing of 11,764 PCB/low-level waste containers, and 3877 containers of RCRA low-level waste.

DOE reported that it plans to have all Environmental Management assessments and agency-required remedial actions completed by 2002 and all DOE Environmental Management waste shipped by the end of 2006. (DOE, Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, September 19, 2000 [a handout]; Portsmouth Environmental Bulletin, Sep. 2000)

DOE plans to begin shipping 5200 tons of "low-level contaminated scrap" from the X-747H scrap metal yard to Envirocare in mid-October. Packaging and shipping the scrap is expected to take two years. Shipments will travel by rail and by truck. (DOE, "Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, September 19, 2000")

September 18 a garbage truck struck the back end of a tractor trailer that was carrying three crates of radioactive sludge from the Portsmouth plant to the Alaron company in Pennsylvania, where the sludge was to be processed. The sludge included thorium and uranium compounds. Nobody was injured; and a liquid leaking from the side of one of the crates was found to be non-radioactive. The accident occurred near Interstate 270 and Route 33, southeast of Columbus, Ohio. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/19/00)

Congressman Ted Strickland has released a plan to protect "job security and national energy security" at the Portsmouth plant. The plan has eight points, including maintaining the plant in "hot standby" until the Paducah plant proves it can meet domestic uranium enrichment needs, accelerating cleanup, protecting the plant's supply of coolant and other assets, and helping to develop the next generation of fuel production at the site. (Portsmouth Daily Times, 9/20/00)

Rami Yoakum of the Chillicothe Gazette reported on September 26 that at a meeting the previous day among representatives of USEC, the DOE, and the NRC, Steve Casto, who is managing the shutdown for USEC said of the plant, "Nothing will be operating. It's not going to be returned to service." The cleaning out of uranium deposits in the cascade is scheduled to be concluded by May 3, 2001, and the plant is scheduled to close in June, 2001.

William C. Wallack and Michael Knapik gave other details of the closure in an article in Nuclear Fuel, August 21. USEC told the NRC in an August meeting that it would begin to cut off UF6 feed to the cascade and to reduce power by next spring. It intends to turn over to DOE by June 1, 2002, the installations that it no longer needs. The company reported that it may not decide for a year or two how long it will keep the transfer/shipping facility at Portsmouth open. The NRC has moved up its tentative date for approving the amendment that USEC has requested to its license certificate in order to make changes at the plant during the shutdown process. The agency expected to approve the amendment by the end of September rather than of November as originally planned, because rapid headway had already been made in the safety requirement process.

IV. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE)

Congress completed passage of the Fiscal Year 2001 Energy and Water Development Appropriation Act the evening of October 2. The bill includes funding for cleanup, construction of conversion facilities, and worker health and safety programs at Paducah and Portsmouth. We have received conflicting figures on dollar amounts. Therefore, we shall state the provisions in the next newsletter after the situation is clearer.

As of October 2, Congress had not succeeded in passing a measure to compensate workers made ill by their work on weapons production. The Senate had included a compensation package in its version of the Fiscal Year 2001 Defense Authorization Bill (see UEN, July and Sept.). The Republican leadership in the House rejected the package, despite hard-hitting testimony delivered by workers and workers' families at hearings in the House and despite pleas from DOE and from various state governors and Democratic and Republican members of the House and Senate. Efforts to salvage the compensation were continuing.

V. U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC)

The NRC has completed the review of USEC's financial situation that was prompted by the downgrading of USEC's corporate credit rating to below investment grade earlier this year. It sent to House Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley (R-VA) and to certain other members of Congress a copy of a report on USEC by its own staff and a report from its contractor IFC Consulting. Since the reports contain proprietary information, they will not be released to the public. However, the press learned key points.

The NRC found that USEC, operating only the Paducah plant, cannot be expected to turn a profit after 2003. Any profit that USEC would generate after that date would come from selling Russian uranium, SWU and uranium from its own shrinking inventory, and other nuclear materials. The NRC does not believe that USEC can put an alternative technology into operation before 2009.

Although USEC's earlier and sounder financial position was one of the bases on which the NRC certified the operation of the Paducah and Portsmouth enrichment plants, the NRC will not suspend or withdraw certification because of the decline in USEC's fortunes. Doing so would not accomplish the statutory objective of maintaining "a reliable and economical domestic source of enriched uranium." In fact, it would "shut down a domestic supply altogether," NRC chairman Richard Meserve wrote to Bliley. "We do not believe that any further NRC study of the USEC situation is justified, particularly in view of the fact that NRC is limited in the action it can take to address the maintenance of domestic enrichment services."

Congressmen Ted Strickland (D-OH) and Edward Whitfield (R-KY) said that the NRC decision confirms their fears that USEC is on the way to becoming a broker of Russian uranium rather than a producer. (www.nuke-energy.com/data/other/usec_fin_con.html ; Jonathan Riskind, Columbus Dispatch, 9/13/00) William M. Timbers, CEO of USEC, said in a speech September 7 to the Seventh Annual International Nuclear Materials Policy Forum, "The doom and gloom scenarios about USEC's prospects are greatly exaggerated."

(See, in particular, Porstmouth, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Russia, and Alternative Technology)

The New York Times reported September 19 that the Clinton administration has been urging Russia not to sell to Iran laser enrichment technology that could enable Iran to produce highly enriched uranium for weapons. Russia has been helping Iran to finish construction of a nuclear power plant at Bushehr in Iran since 1994. Russian officials have told White House aides that Russia has suspended the enrichment technology contract, which is between Iran and a research institute in St. Petersburg, and is reviewing it to determine whether Iran could use the planned facility to enrich uranium for military ends. [Laser technology is particularly suitable for clandestine enrichment, because, by means of it, uranium or plutonium can be enriched rapidly in a small installation.] (Judith Miller, New York Times, 9/19/00; Walter Pincus, Washington Post, 9/20/00)

The deputy director general of Tenex, Alexei Grigoriev, addressing the International Nuclear Materials Policy Forum September 7, said that US trade restrictions and USEC's attempts to be commercially successful are eroding the value to Russia of the US_Russian HEU agreement to Russia. Unlike William Timbers, who also addressed the gathering, he does not believe that Tenex and USEC have an "agreement in principle" as to a pricing and delivery mechanism for continued implementation of the HEU agreement after 2001, when the current terms expire. The so-called "agreement in principle" rests on market-based pricing. Grigoriev believes that market forces may not be able to sustain the US-Russian deal. "Should mutually acceptable solution of a purely commercial nature not be found due to currently unfavorable market conditions, it may be necessary to apply to the governments of our countries for assistance to resolve this matter." (www.nuke-energy.com/data/other/russ_belv.html )

Russian Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov presented a more upbeat view of the US-Russian HEU agreement, when he spoke to a press conference at the Itar-Tass news agency September 12. The agreement is very profitable for Russia, he said. It finances jobs for conversion and for personnel dismissed from the nuclear defense complex, provides money for ecological projects, and has allowed increased expenditures on the nuclear submarine program.

The Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy told Itar-Tass September 21 that Russia plans to increase uranium mining and exports of nuclear fuel.

The US Department of Energy issued a draft DUF6 Materials Use Roadmap, September 1. The roadmap covers the 470,000 megatons (MT) of depleted uranium (DU) and the 225,000 MT of fluorine that are combined in the depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6) stored at the three gaseous diffusion plants; the 74,000 MT of carbon steel composing the UF6 storage cylinders; and 25,000 MT of other DU, primarily in the form of uranium trioxide and tetrafluoride, stored at DOE's Savannah River Site. It characterizes and analyzes alternative paths for eventual disposition of these materials, identifies the barriers that exist to implementing the paths, and makes recommendations concerning the activities that should be undertaken to overcome the barriers.

It notes that the level of uranium 235 in the UF6 varies from less than 0.2% to near that of natural uranium (0.711%), with an average enrichment of 0.27%; that some UF6 cylinders contain traces of radionuclides such as neptunium 235 and technetium 9, resulting from the enriching of reprocessed uranium; and that the decay products of depleted uranium are more radioactive than the depleted uranium itself. These decay products will remain in the cylinders when they are first "emptied" and will build up again, to about twenty times the radioactivity of DU, in any products made from DU.

The first step in disposition is to convert the UF6 to a stable form in a conversion plant Anticipated products of the plant are depleted uranium in the form of tetrafluoride, oxide, and/or metal; empty cylinders; and fluorine in a usable or stable form. (The report does not evaluate conversion methods or choice of conversion products.) The possible pathways for disposal or use of the products are assigned to Categories A, B, C, and D, with A being "paths for which barrier reduction activities are recommended" and D, "paths for which barrier reduction activities are not needed."

Category A pathways are low-level waste disposal, long-term storage as a national resource, and DU-based heavy concrete for such uses as radiation shielding and irradiated nuclear fuel and high level waste transportation and storage. Category B pathways include electrodes for aluminum refining, catalysts for fuel cells, including "conceivably, in consumer products (e.g., small fuel cells for vehicles or homes)," and catalysts for converting automobile exhausts. In regard to Category B, DOE says that many of the paths would involve use of significant amounts of DU "outside of radiologically regulated areas. Such paths face regulatory uncertainties and issues of risk perception that can present significant institutional barriers."

The leading barrier reduction activity supporting multiple paths is establishing the policy and regulations under which products with DU "could be used in various non-governmental applications." DOE "will support a broad spectrum of investments to reduce barriers along paths related to nuclear material storage and/or disposal that have relatively low technical risk and use large quantities of DU in radiologically regulated areas." It "will make targeted investments" in a variety of pathways "where the uses are more speculative or simply require a small investment." The pathways for targeted investment are drawn from Category B and include electrodes and catalysts.

The draft can be downloaded from http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/pdf/DURoadmap.pdf . A copy can be ordered from Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Management Program (NE-30), US Department of Energy, 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown, MD 20874; fax 301-903-4905. Comments on the draft will be received until October 20. They can be mailed or faxed to the address above, or e-mailed to DUF6. comments@hq.doe.gov with "Comments on DU Uses Roadmap" in the subject line.

September 12, DOE announced through the Commerce Business Daily that in October the agency will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the DUF6 conversion project. The project will entail "design, construction, and operation of DUF6 conversion plants to be located at the Portsmouth and Paducah sites; the maintenance of the cylinder inventory (beginning one year prior to conversion plant operation); transportation and disposition of the conversion end products; and disposition of empty DUF6 storage cylinders." Contrary to what DOE had announced in the last draft RFP, the project will be structured around a cost-type contract financed by government appropriations rather by a privately financed, fixed price contract. "The Department is open to all technical approaches and final product forms." Selection of a contractor will be "based on technical and cost factors."

As part of DOE's feasibility study of the possible use of a dedicated mill to recycle metals within the agency, DOE is seeking expressions of interest in a melting and casting contract from owners of electric-powered melt production furnaces. Some of the metal to be processed would "contain low levels of radionuclides." DOE foresees a dedicated mill processing 20,000 to 60,000 tons of metal (carbon steel, stainless steel, and nickel) per year. All the products and any process metal scrap would be returned to DOE, which would be responsible for disposing of all radionuclide-contaminated waste. Expressions of interest were to be provided to DOE by September 25. (Commerce Business Daily Web Site: cbdnet.accgess.gpo.gov/index.html )

(See also Paducah and Portsmouth)

DOE and USEC have agreed to cooperate on gas centrifuge enrichment technology. USEC will pay DOE $4 million in return for the privilege of conducting research and development on this technology for a year at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. DOE will oversee the project, which will involve people employed by USEC, by subcontractors, and by DOE. USEC intends to begin developing a new centrifuge design by building on past DOE work in centrifuge enrichment, but incorporating recent technological advances. Research will include design of components; refurbishment and restart of facilities to make, assemble, and test components; and project planning and assessment. According to USEC spokesperson Elizabeth Stuckle, the project may be lengthened or extended if public money becomes available. In its September 15 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, USEC stated that it plans to choose "an advanced technology program in 2002." (DOE Press Release, 9/19/00; Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 9/20/00)

September 6-8 USA Today published the results of an extensive investigation into the governments' use of private companies in the forties and fifties to process nuclear weapons material. The investigation was directed by journalist Peter Eisler. The newspaper identified more than three hundred companies and properties that apparently engaged in nuclear weapons work and printed a list of 150 of them about which it could obtain basic information. It also presented a series of articles that described the conditions of work at some of the plants, and the impact of the plants on worker health and the environment. USA Today contracted with The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research to provide an analysis of the health effects. An amazing number of the plants worked with uranium: extracting it from phosphoric acid, refining it, rolling and extruding it, grinding it, recovering uranium from wastes . . .

Phelps Dodge Copper in Bayway, New Jersey was "possibly involved in enrichment work" and Kellex/Pierpont (Vitro) in Jersey City and Vitro in West Orange, New Jersey, engaged in uranium "isotope separation." Linde Air Products Division in Tonawanda, New York, did "large-scale uranium separation and processing." "Separation" here may mean enrichment. Clevite in Cleveland processed uranium, including making enriched uranium fuel. Possibly the processing included enrichment. [Enrichment techniques other than gaseous diffusion may have been used, since the United States experimented with a variety of methods.]

As a result of the response by journalists, members of Congress, and others to the USA Today exposé, DOE posted on the Web a list of 577 government and private sites that may have been involved in nuclear weapons and nuclear energy related activities. DOE compiled the previously internal list in 1995 as part of an effort to identify sites for possible inclusion in the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (Fusrap). At the present time, the list shows for each site only the name, the location, an alternative name if any, and the status as of 1995. DOE has promised to update the list and add further details on the sites. It can be accessed at http://www2.em.doe.gov/sitelist .