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Crews have taken the first bites out of the old uranium mill-tailings pile in Moab, Utah, beginning a yearslong process of transferring it far from the Colorado River. Abut 630,000 tons will have been moved from Moab to the disposal cell near Crescent Junction by year's end, said Wendee Ryan of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Energy Department and its contractor, Energy Solutions Corp., began moving the tailings pile this year. Moab residents and downstream water providers lobbied for years to have the 16-million-ton pile of mill tailings moved from its spot along the north bank of the Colorado River to a cell up against the Bookcliff Mountains at Crescent Junction that is deemed less likely to contaminate the river. The pile is being moved by train from Moab to the disposal cell 30 miles north.

Crews have taken the first bites out of the old uranium mill-tailings pile in Moab, Utah, beginning a yearslong process of transferring it far from the Colorado River. Abut 630,000 tons will have been moved from Moab to the disposal cell near Crescent Junction by year's end, said Wendee Ryan of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Energy Department and its contractor, Energy Solutions Corp., began moving the tailings pile this year. Moab residents and downstream water providers lobbied for years to have the 16-million-ton pile of mill tailings moved from its spot along the north bank of the Colorado River to a cell up against the Bookcliff Mountains at Crescent Junction that is deemed less likely to contaminate the river. The pile is being moved by train from Moab to the disposal cell 30 miles north.

EnergySolutions, Inc. (NYSE: ES) announced today that $22.9 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding has been allocated to the Moab UMTRA project. The total amount of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the Moab project is $108 million. The funding is being used to accelerate removal of uranium mill tailings away from the banks of the Colorado River. Thus far 160 jobs have been created this year as a result of Recovery Act funding. "We are thrilled that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated sufficient funding to the Moab project to accelerate the cleanup of the site. This is great news for the community and for all who use the Colorado River and Lake Powell," said Steve Creamer, CEO and Chairman of EnergySolutions. The Recovery Act funding is being used to excavate, transport and dispose of additional mill tailings from the Moab site to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved disposal cell at Crescent Junction. This additional work began in June and will continue through September 2011. Additionally, this additional funding supports increasing the size of the disposal cell as well as crushing, transporting, and placing final rock cover on the disposal cell. This portion of the work began in August and continues through September 2011. Sixteen million tons of uranium mill tailings will eventually be relocated 30 miles north of Moab to a location designated by the DOE.

EnergySolutions, Inc. (NYSE: ES) announced today that $22.9 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding has been allocated to the Moab UMTRA project. The total amount of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the Moab project is $108 million. The funding is being used to accelerate removal of uranium mill tailings away from the banks of the Colorado River. Thus far 160 jobs have been created this year as a result of Recovery Act funding. "We are thrilled that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated sufficient funding to the Moab project to accelerate the cleanup of the site. This is great news for the community and for all who use the Colorado River and Lake Powell," said Steve Creamer, CEO and Chairman of EnergySolutions. The Recovery Act funding is being used to excavate, transport and dispose of additional mill tailings from the Moab site to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved disposal cell at Crescent Junction. This additional work began in June and will continue through September 2011. Additionally, this additional funding supports increasing the size of the disposal cell as well as crushing, transporting, and placing final rock cover on the disposal cell. This portion of the work began in August and continues through September 2011. Sixteen million tons of uranium mill tailings will eventually be relocated 30 miles north of Moab to a location designated by the DOE.

"Gerald Boyd, the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge manager, said several of the environmental cleanup projects funded with Recovery Act money are coming in under budget, and Boyd said DOE hopes (plans) to spend those savings on other projects. Oak Ridge officials apparently are expecting other stimulus money may become available as well. "We have some proposals in Washington that we would like to do - a few additional projects," Boyd said. "They're all EM (environmental management) projects.""

"Colorado Governor Bill Ritter stood by the banks of the Arkansas River near a neighborhood contaminated by a uranium mill today and signed legislation that will force uranium mills to clean up existing messes before launching new projects. "This just gives us a better hold on the milling process," Ritter said before signing the bill, a bipartisan measure sponsored by Rep. Buffie McFadyen, and Sens. Ken Kester and Bob Bacon. Greenwood Village based Cotter Corp. operates the mill that became a Superfund cleanup site in 1984. During the statehouse battle over the law, Cotter vice president John Hamrick said the legislation would kill Cotter's proposed project to refurbish the mill and haul 12.5 million tons of uranium ore from New Mexico for processing. Hamrick on Tuesday declined to comment on the status on any future project."

"Namibia's Chamber of Mines, which represents the mining industry in the southern African country, is concerned that power and water supply shortages and royalty tax legislation could hamper investment. Mike Leech, president of the industry body in one of the world's top uranium producers, said a royalty tax passed at the end of 2008 would "increase rather than reduce investor risk". "(The tax) is likely ... to make it harder for exploration companies to get projects past the credit committees of the banking institutions they will have to raise the money from," he said in an annual review the chamber published last week."

"A June update by the U.S. Department of Energy said that 1.5 million tons of uranium mill tailings have been removed from near the banks of the Colorado River and buried in a disposal site 30 miles away. Federal stimulus funding of $108 million has accelerated the cleanup, which will tackle an additional 1.2 million tons of tailings between now and September 2011."

"t's not out of the question that the United States might not be around long enough to see the complete cleanup of its Cold War legacy in Washington State. Not far from the banks of the Columbia River resides the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, once the most important manufacturer of plutonium for America's nuclear arsenal. Today, the 560-square-mile decommissioned facility is teeming with plutonium, one of the most toxic substances on earth (minute particles of it can cause cancer), with a half-life of 24,000 years. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated back in the mid-1990s that Hanford had more than 111,000 kilograms of plutonium to dispose of. A former department official, Robert Alvarez, recently went over old Energy reports and determined that the original math was way off. It turns out that Hanford has three times more plutonium than was calculated in 1996."

Colorado uranium mining operations are being shut, postponed or scrapped as stock and commodity prices plummet and financing dries up. In the past six weeks, two mines - Whirlwind and JBird - have temporarily shut. A project in San Miguel County has been scrapped, and the development of the Van-4 mine in Montrose County has been postponed. "There have been lower prices, but there hasn't been this precipitous a drop in the last 25 years," said Stuart Sanderson, president of the Colorado Mining Association. The ingredients for the market free-fall are a 40 percent drop in uranium prices this year, a sharp decline in mining stock prices and a lack of financing for projects. Behind those trends are hedge funds that had bought up uranium and banks no longer willing to lend money, mining industry executives said. "Industrywide, everyone is suffering," said Greg Barnes, an analyst with TD Newcastle Inc. in Toronto.

Plans to clean up the Atlas tailings pile outside Moab are the subject of a meeting planned Thursday by the U.S. Energy Department. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at Moab's Grand Center, 182 N. 500 West. The public will be updated about what is being done to begin hauling the 16 million tons of tailings and other uranium-ore-processing waste from the banks of the Colorado north of Moab to a newly constructed disposal site 32 miles north at Crescent Junction. - Judy Fahys Advertisement Return to Top

Yesterday, the Department of Energy (DOE) reaffirmed its prior decision to relocate the uranium mill tailings predominantly by rail from Moab, Utah. The tailings will be trained from the banks of the Colorado River 30 miles north to Crescent Junction, Utah. DOE may still consider using truck transport under certain circumstances, but it won't be the primary mode of transportation for the contaminated pile.

A worker at Ukraine's embassy in Germany has been arrested on charges of attempted smuggling of radioactive materials. The man and the security manager of a local bank were detained near the central Ukrainian city of Cherkassy with radioactive metals in their possession worth 3.1 million euros ($4.9 million), said police, as reported by the Interfax news agency on Monday, July 7.

Russian state uranium holding Atomenergoprom said on Tuesday it had bought stakes in uranium deposits located in Kazakhstan from tycoon Vladimir Anisimov for an undisclosed sum through its unit Atomredmetzoloto (ARMZ). State-controlled Gazprombank, the banking arm of Russian gas giant Gazprom (GAZP.MM), said in a separate statement it had provided ARMZ with a loan for the acquisition of the assets.

New technology is providing information on how contaminated ground water from the Hanford nuclear reservation may be entering the Columbia River. A study for the Department of Energy of where ground water seeps into the river and what contaminants it contains won't be completed until the end of the year. But already there is evidence showing ground water enters the Columbia River in upwellings away from its shores, said Larry Hulstrom, Washington Closure Hanford project lead for the Columbia River investigation. It's generally been assumed that ground water enters the river in seeps and springs within the first 6 feet of its banks. But some of the ground water may become trapped below a hard layer in the ground and only seeps into deep areas of the river, rather than at its shores. "We've never had the technology available to determine if it was upwelling further beyond 6 feet," Hulstrom said.

EnergySolutions has deep pockets. And thanks to the benevolence of the company and a bill pending before Congress, U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop does, too. The nuclear waste disposal firm and its executives have donated $28,200 to the Utah congressman's re-election campaign in the current election cycle, including nearly $25,000 since April. That's more than 40 percent of the money Bishop has received.