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More trains filled with depleted uranium are coming to Utah. Even as state regulators consider a moratorium on new shipments of the radioactive material -- which becomes more hazardous over time -- the U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship another 14,800 barrels of it to the EnergySolutions Inc. disposal site in Tooele County. Part of the $1.6 billion in federal stimulus money for the Savannah River cleanup site in South Carolina will pay for rail cars filled with depleted uranium to be buried in Utah during the next 13 months. "This is exactly the situation we were hoping to prevent by asking the state Radiation Control Board to enact a moratorium on depleted uranium," said Christopher Thomas of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah.

More trains filled with depleted uranium are coming to Utah. Even as state regulators consider a moratorium on new shipments of the radioactive material -- which becomes more hazardous over time -- the U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship another 14,800 barrels of it to the EnergySolutions Inc. disposal site in Tooele County. Part of the $1.6 billion in federal stimulus money for the Savannah River cleanup site in South Carolina will pay for rail cars filled with depleted uranium to be buried in Utah during the next 13 months. "This is exactly the situation we were hoping to prevent by asking the state Radiation Control Board to enact a moratorium on depleted uranium," said Christopher Thomas of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah.

More trains filled with depleted uranium are coming to Utah. Even as state regulators consider a moratorium on new shipments of the radioactive material -- which becomes more hazardous over time -- the U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship another 14,800 barrels of it to the EnergySolutions Inc. disposal site in Tooele County. Part of the $1.6 billion in federal stimulus money for the Savannah River cleanup site in South Carolina will pay for rail cars filled with depleted uranium to be buried in Utah during the next 13 months. "This is exactly the situation we were hoping to prevent by asking the state Radiation Control Board to enact a moratorium on depleted uranium," said Christopher Thomas of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah.

The U.S. Forest Service is developing an environmental cleanup plan for the San Mateo Uranium Mine under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. The site is located on the Mount Taylor Ranger District of the Cibola National Forest, Cibola County, approximately 12 miles northeast of Grants. * The Forest Service prepared an Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis (EE/CA) to identify and evaluate several cleanup alternatives to address the waste rock piles associated with past uranium mining. The recommended cleanup alternative is to consolidate the waste rock piles and place them in an on-site repository. A geomembrane would be placed above the waste rock in the repository and would be covered with clean soil, re-vegetated, and armored with rock. Rock armoring would reduce the potential for erosion during heavy storm events and reduce the potential risk of exposure to gamma radiation and direct contact, inhalation, or ingestion of waste rock. The agency is requesting public input and comments on the EE/CA and the recommended cleanup alternative. The EE/CA and the Administrative Record are available for review at the Southwestern Regional Office in Albuquerque and the Mount Taylor Ranger District Office, 1800 Lobo Canyon Rd., in Grants and also available at the following link: http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/cibola/projects/index.shtml.

The U.S. Forest Service is developing an environmental cleanup plan for the San Mateo Uranium Mine under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. The site is located on the Mount Taylor Ranger District of the Cibola National Forest, Cibola County, approximately 12 miles northeast of Grants. * The Forest Service prepared an Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis (EE/CA) to identify and evaluate several cleanup alternatives to address the waste rock piles associated with past uranium mining. The recommended cleanup alternative is to consolidate the waste rock piles and place them in an on-site repository. A geomembrane would be placed above the waste rock in the repository and would be covered with clean soil, re-vegetated, and armored with rock. Rock armoring would reduce the potential for erosion during heavy storm events and reduce the potential risk of exposure to gamma radiation and direct contact, inhalation, or ingestion of waste rock. The agency is requesting public input and comments on the EE/CA and the recommended cleanup alternative. The EE/CA and the Administrative Record are available for review at the Southwestern Regional Office in Albuquerque and the Mount Taylor Ranger District Office, 1800 Lobo Canyon Rd., in Grants and also available at the following link: http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/cibola/projects/index.shtml.

"Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and GOP Sen. George V. Voinovich are locking arms politically to go after federal cash to help fund the cleanup of the site of a closed uranium-enrichment plant in southern Ohio. Ohio's U.S. senators asked key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week to come up with all the money President Barack Obama asked for in his proposed 2011 budget for cleanup and related efforts at the Piketon site: $479million total, including $416million for direct decontamination and cleanup efforts. Voinovich is a member of the appropriations committee. This is separate from ongoing work by USEC, a private company, to try to build a commercial enrichment plant on the site. Commercial uranium-enrichment plants produce fuel for nuclear-power plants. The old Piketon plant produced fuel for nuclear-power plants before it closed in 2001, but in the Cold War, it also made weapons-grade uranium for the country's atomic-weapons program. Congress allocated $303million for the cleanup in the 2010 budget, and the Piketon cleanup got an additional $118 million from the stimulus package."

Along with automobile makers and banks, a number of senators whose districts include U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contaminated sites are asking for stimulus money to rejuvenate local economies with cleanup work and perhaps, freshly-cleaned land for industrial development. According to the DOE, spending more and completing cleanup would enable the government to decrease the "footprint" or overall size of each site, releasing more property for development. The letter asking for the funding was signed by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Jim Risch, D-Idaho; and Tom Udall, D-N.M. Sen. Patty Murray, D.-Wash.; is supporting boosting cleanup spending nationally by $6 billion. Since the mid-1990's, the DOE has already spent more than $7.3 billion on environmental cleanup nationally each year.

Project Scope A National Academies committee will provide technical and strategic advice to the DOE-EM's Office of Engineering and Technology to support the development and implementation of its cleanup technology roadmap. Specifically, the study will identify: o Principal science and technology gaps and their priorities for the cleanup program based on previous National Academies reports, updated and extended to reflect current site conditions and EM priorities and input form key external groups, such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Environmental Protection Agency, and state regulatory agencies. o Strategic opportunities to leverage research and development from other DOE programs (e.g., in the Office of Science, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and the National Nuclear Security Administration), other federal agencies (e.g., Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency), universities, and the private sector. o Core capabilities at the national laboratories that will be needed to address EM's long-term, high-risk cleanup challenges, especially at the four laboratories located at the large DOE sites (Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Savannah River National Laboratory). o The infrastructure at these national laboratories and at EM sites that should be maintained to support research, development, and bench and pilot scale demonstrations of technologies for the EM cleanup program, especially in radiochemistry.

The name Poison Canyon offers a hint of what's faced by those trying to clean up abandoned uranium mines in the West. The area north of the village of Milan contains some of the 259 abandoned uranium sites in New Mexico that need cleanup. State officials are pressuring the federal government to direct more money to those areas because of their unique hazard of radioactivity. "In this case, a pile of rocks is more than just a pile of rocks," said New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division Director Bill Brancard. There are hundreds of thousands of safety issues at abandoned hardrock mines in 13 western states, according to the Government Accountability Office. Thousands of sites, many dating to the 19th century, also are considered environmentally damaged.

The name Poison Canyon offers a hint of what's faced by those trying to clean up abandoned uranium mines in the West. The area north of the village of Milan contains some of the 259 abandoned uranium sites in New Mexico that need cleanup. State officials are pressuring the federal government to direct more money to those areas because of their unique hazard of radioactivity. "In this case, a pile of rocks is more than just a pile of rocks," said New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division Director Bill Brancard. There are hundreds of thousands of safety issues at abandoned hardrock mines in 13 western states, according to the Government Accountability Office. Thousands of sites, many dating to the 19th century, also are considered environmentally damaged.

The name Poison Canyon offers a hint of what's faced by those trying to clean up abandoned uranium mines in the West. The area north of the village of Milan contains some of the 259 abandoned uranium sites in New Mexico that need cleanup. State officials are pressuring the federal government to direct more money to those areas because of their unique hazard of radioactivity. "In this case, a pile of rocks is more than just a pile of rocks," said New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division Director Bill Brancard. There are hundreds of thousands of safety issues at abandoned hardrock mines in 13 western states, according to the Government Accountability Office. Thousands of sites, many dating to the 19th century, also are considered environmentally damaged.

For years, the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board has served as the Bayview-Hunters Point community's main voice in the U.S. Navy's environmental cleanup plans for the toxic former naval station. But the committee is suddenly being disbanded just as the cleanup enters a crucial phase. Used for shipbuilding and submarine maintenance and repair, and the decontamination, storage, and disposal of radioactive and atomic weapons testing materials, the shipyard was added to the Superfund national toxic site cleanup list in 1989. But it is also at the heart of where Mayor Gavin Newsom has partnered with Lennar Corp. on the city's biggest development proposal, involving 10,500 homes and a new stadium for the 49ers. As the Navy prepares to release a series of important studies and reports concerning the cleanup of the dirtiest parcels on the former shipyard, community members were outraged by the Navy's announcement in late May that it is preparing to dissolve the RAB in the next 30 days.

"The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has approved a new component to clean-up efforts at the U.S. Department of Energy's former Gaseous Diffusion Plant. On Tuesday, the state EPA said it has approved plans from the U.S. Department of Energy that will allow proper cleanup and, in some cases, tearing down of buildings that were used to produce enriched uranium until 2001. Currently, the Department of Energy is conducting cleanup of soil and water at the site under a 1989 agreement, but the new agreement allows it to begin decontamination and decommissioning work in the buildings on the site as well. The Energy department committed $303 million in cleanup funds for 2010, and an additional $118 million was awarded from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's office said $500 million is set aside for cleanup efforts in the 2011 Energy department budget."

The Hanford nuclear site was established in 1943 in the town of Hanford, Washington along the Columbia River. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the nuclear bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. The plant's waste disposal procedures were woefully inadequate. To this day, millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste remains at the site and comprises the largest Hanford decomission activities 1964-71environmental clean up in Uited States history since being decommissioned between 1964 and 1971. On September 30, 2009: U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) a senior member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Committee, announced that the final version of a spending bill that funds Hanford cleanup will include more than $87 million more for cleanup than the President's Fiscal Year 2010 budget request. Murray, who was part of the Conference Committee and Appropriations Subcommittee that crafted the final legislation, fought for the inclusion of the additional funding after the House version of the bill cut Hanford funding to $51.8 million below the President's budget request. The additional funding secured by Murray will go primarily toward groundwater cleanup and K Basin sludge treatment and disposal.

The Hanford nuclear site was established in 1943 in the town of Hanford, Washington along the Columbia River. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the nuclear bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. The plant's waste disposal procedures were woefully inadequate. To this day, millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste remains at the site and comprises the largest Hanford decomission activities 1964-71environmental clean up in Uited States history since being decommissioned between 1964 and 1971. On September 30, 2009: U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) a senior member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Committee, announced that the final version of a spending bill that funds Hanford cleanup will include more than $87 million more for cleanup than the President's Fiscal Year 2010 budget request. Murray, who was part of the Conference Committee and Appropriations Subcommittee that crafted the final legislation, fought for the inclusion of the additional funding after the House version of the bill cut Hanford funding to $51.8 million below the President's budget request. The additional funding secured by Murray will go primarily toward groundwater cleanup and K Basin sludge treatment and disposal.

"Removal of radioactive thorium along the West Branch of the DuPage River has resumed after a year's hiatus. Tronox Inc., the chemical manufacturing company responsible for the cleanup efforts, filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2009. After months of legal and political wrangling, a bankruptcy judge approved a plan to create a trust fund that will hold money needed to pay for the cleanup efforts in the portion of the river that runs through Warrenville. That move paved the way for cleanup work to resume. The trust fund contains $25 million, which is expected to be enough to cover the cost of thorium removal from a nearly milelong stretch that runs from Butterfield Road to the Warrenville Grove dam, said Tony Charlton, DuPage County's stormwater management chief. Workers are already on site and are expected to be done with the second-to-last phase of the river cleanup by the end of this year."

Question: When is a plan not a plan? Answer: When it is Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's "cleanup" proposal for the town of Port Hope, Ontario. At a packed hearing last week, Canada's nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, listened to presentations on the proposal from its staff, AECL, private citizens, and volunteer organizations - roughly 100 presentations in all, spanning 17 hours of hearing time. AECL is asking for a licence for a low level radioactive waste site. The site will house approximately 1.5 million cubic metres of nuclear and industrial waste, collected from the community over the course of the next decade. The proposal was approved in 2007, following a six-year environmental assessment. The ensuing licensing process should have been fairly straight forward - hash out a few technical details and get shovels in the ground.

Question: When is a plan not a plan? Answer: When it is Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's "cleanup" proposal for the town of Port Hope, Ontario. At a packed hearing last week, Canada's nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, listened to presentations on the proposal from its staff, AECL, private citizens, and volunteer organizations - roughly 100 presentations in all, spanning 17 hours of hearing time. AECL is asking for a licence for a low level radioactive waste site. The site will house approximately 1.5 million cubic metres of nuclear and industrial waste, collected from the community over the course of the next decade. The proposal was approved in 2007, following a six-year environmental assessment. The ensuing licensing process should have been fairly straight forward - hash out a few technical details and get shovels in the ground.

Question: When is a plan not a plan? Answer: When it is Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's "cleanup" proposal for the town of Port Hope, Ontario. At a packed hearing last week, Canada's nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, listened to presentations on the proposal from its staff, AECL, private citizens, and volunteer organizations - roughly 100 presentations in all, spanning 17 hours of hearing time. AECL is asking for a licence for a low level radioactive waste site. The site will house approximately 1.5 million cubic metres of nuclear and industrial waste, collected from the community over the course of the next decade. The proposal was approved in 2007, following a six-year environmental assessment. The ensuing licensing process should have been fairly straight forward - hash out a few technical details and get shovels in the ground.

Washington state and federal officials announced a court-enforceable schedule Tuesday for cleaning up the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, ending more than two years of negotiations that followed dozens of missed deadlines. The sprawling Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created near the Tri-Cities as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II, has been a focus of extensive cleanup efforts for two decades. In that time, the pact that governs cleanup has been changed more than 400 times. Washington state sued the Energy Department last November over missed cleanup deadlines, though the two sides settled part of the lawsuit in February. That agreement accelerated cleanup of contaminated groundwater along the neighboring Columbia River, among other things, and both sides said it would shrink the 586-square-mile site to just 75 square miles by 2015.

Work has started to make Hanford's massive landfill for low-level radioactive waste even larger. Improvements also are being made to help the landfill, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, or ERDF, keep up with the accelerated pace of environmental cleanup at the nuclear reservation. Cleanup work at Hanford is increasing with the infusion of $1.96 billion in federal economic stimulus money. With more cleanup work comes the need for more waste disposal capacity, so the stimulus funding includes about $100 million for work at ERDF. "The pace of cleanup at Hanford is totally linked to the capabilities of ERDF," said Dave Einan, an environmental engineer for the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates the Department of Energy project.

Members of a committee helping to oversee cleanup of nuclear waste at the site of the now-closed Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant here met with their counterparts who worked with the cleanup of the former Feed Material Production Center in Fernald, near Cincinnati. The Fernald plant, built by the Atomic Energy Commission, produced more than 500 million pounds of uranium metal from 1952 to 1989, said Johnny Reising, site director for the Fernald closing project for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Cleanup of the radioactive waste byproducts, stored in metal cylinders above ground, began in the 1980s and, after nearly 25 years, is now completed. The cost was nearly $4.5 billion.

"La Grande is about 130 miles southeast of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Still, a proposed U.S. Department of Energy plan for the cleanup of radioactive waste at Hanford has people in the Grande Ronde Valley alarmed. Alarmed because the plan could result in Union County residents being exposed to additional radiation. This point was made boldly Monday at a hearing conducted at Eastern Oregon University by the U.S. Department of Energy. The hearing was conducted to solicit public comment on a draft environmental impact statement detailing alternatives being considered for the next step in the cleanup of nuclear waste at Hanford. A major concern of the plan is that it would result in the U.S. Department of Energy lifting its moratorium on shipments of radioactive waste to Hanford from other DOE sites. The moratorium, in place since 1980, would likely end in 2022 if the U.S. Department of Energy plan goes into effect."

"Cleanup efforts could put more trucks carrying radioactive material on area highways A hearing Monday on radioactive waste cleanup options for the nation's largest nuclear facility drew close to 70 area residents - and a state Department of Energy official who said most of the federal government's cleanup proposals are fatally flawed. The public hearing in Eugene, one of more than a half-dozen scheduled throughout the Pacific Northwest, was organized by the U.S. Department of Energy to present options for dealing with the nation's biggest cleanup project at the Hanford site in Washington state. The proposal could result in more nuclear waste being transported on Interstate 5 and other regional highways."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has notified the Department of Energy that they must immediately resume cleanup activities at its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., or face escalating penalties. A federal facilities agreement was signed between EPA, DOE and California state agencies in June 1988. The agreement outlines DOE's responsibilities and milestones for addressing site contamination. DOE has failed to operate numerous groundwater and soil vapor treatment facilities and associated wells -- an integral part of cleanup activities at the site. While pump-and-treat systems have been shutdown, site contamination has spread laterally and vertically, resulting in a larger volume of contaminated groundwater and increasing timeframes for completing the overall cleanup.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is proposing that $6 billion to $7 billion be included in a national economic recovery package for cleanup work at Hanford and other Department of Energy nuclear sites. That's in line with a proposal that's outlined in a DOE report that covers one option for the Obama administration to consider. The DOE proposal calls for $6 billion to be spent to significantly reduce the size of large contaminated sites such as Hanford and finish cleanup at smaller sites. The proposal also calls for DOE cleanup sites to be developed into energy parks. "To make progress ... we need to put in enough funds to reduce the size of the sites," Murray said Tuesday during a Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearing for Peter Orszag, nominated for director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is getting nearly $2 billion in stimulus money for job-generating projects, but the top watchdog over the former nuclear weapons production site questions whether the extra money will reduce cleanup delays. The U.S. Department of Energy is using the money, about equal to Hanford's annual budget, for scores of construction and cleanup projects at one of the world's largest hazardous-waste sites. The projects include cleaning contaminated groundwater and buried waste along the Columbia River, a high priority for Oregon and Washington regulators. But the department isn't accelerating long-delayed cleanup of 177 leak-prone underground tanks filled with 53 million gallons of radioactive sludge, notes Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced $6 billion in new funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to accelerate environmental cleanup work and create thousands of jobs across 12 states. Projects identified for funding will focus on accelerating cleanup of soil and groundwater, transportation and disposal of waste, and cleaning and demolishing former weapons complex facilities. "These investments will put Americans to work while cleaning up contamination from the cold war era," said Secretary Chu. "It reflects our commitment to future generations as well as to help local economies get moving again." These projects and the new funding are managed by the Department's Office of Environmental Management, which is responsible for the risk reduction and cleanup of the environmental legacy from the nation's nuclear weapons program, one of the largest, most diverse and technically complex environmental programs in the world. The states and DOE sites that will receive this funding include: