Group items tagged

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will require more detailed environmental studies of proposed new in-situ uranium mines in the western United States. The in-situ technique involves pumping chemicals into groundwater to free uranium from the surrounding ore so it can be pumped to the surface and refined. The agency announced Thursday that is has released its final environmental study of the mining method after conducting public meetings in Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota and New Mexico. Wyoming is the leading producer of uranium at about 2 million pounds a year.

The Savannah River Site (SRS) achieved a significant milestone Wednesday when the 1,000th shipment of transuranic (TRU) waste was made to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) located near Carlsbad, N.M. The shipment marks the eighth year of SRS shipping radioactive waste from South Carolina to New Mexico without incident. SRS made its first shipment of TRU waste to WIPP on May 8, 2001. SRS has safely shipped more than 28,200 55-gallon drums of TRU waste for disposal at the WIPP geologic repository since that time. "This is a significant accomplishment for the Savannah River Site and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, demonstrating the Department of Energy's commitment to cleaning up legacy waste sites and safely disposing of the waste inventories," said Jeff Allison, manager of DOE's Savannah River Operations office. "Every shipment is inspected by the South Carolina Department of Transportation and the Department of Health and Environmental Control to assure it's safe to go on the road before it's released. Both agencies have played important roles in maintaining the safety of shipments and supporting the Department of Energy in this accomplishment." Since the beginning of SRS operations in the early 1950s, more than 30,000 drums and 3,000 non-drum containers of TRU waste have accumulated on concrete pads, where they were covered over with soil, awaiting final disposition.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will require more detailed environmental studies of proposed new in-situ uranium mines in the western United States. The in-situ technique involves pumping chemicals into groundwater to free uranium from the surrounding ore so it can be pumped to the surface and refined. The agency announced this week that it has released its final environmental study of the mining method after conducting public meetings in Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota and New Mexico. Critics say the technique pollutes groundwater. But supporters say it's a clean process that's less disruptive than traditional mining methods.

The U.S. government's only effort to hunt down castoff radioactive waste has recovered just 4 percent of the estimated 500,000 X-ray machines, industrial sensors and other items discarded across the country. In the past decade, the U.S. Department of Energy's Off-Site Source Recovery Project in New Mexico has retrieved 21,000 items, said project manager Julia Whitworth. It currently has a two-year waiting list and a 9,000-item backlog -- and is fielding requests to collect an additional 2,000 newly detected items a year. But these efforts are only a drop in the bucket. The Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, estimates there are 500,000 radioactively contaminated metal objects unaccounted for in the United States.

Republicans on the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said Wednesday that panel Chairman Jeff Bingaman has agreed to include some incentives for new nuclear energy projects, clean coal and waste-to-energy in a renewable electricity mandate, though the change will not be enough to satisfy most of the panel's minority party members. The committee will vote on amendments Thursday, with a final vote on the full energy bill due as early as next week. Changes made to the renewable electricity standard will likely garner enough support to clear the committee, though only Kansas Republican Sam Brownback is considered likely to vote with Democrats in favor of the measure. In its current form, the RES supported by Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, and most or all of the panel's other Democrats would require utilities to derive 11% of their output from renewable energy and 4% from energy efficiency improvements. Robert Dillon, a spokesman for the panel's top Republican Lisa Murkowski, said that Bingaman had also agreed to take all new nuclear energy projects out of a utility's baseline, reducing the amount of renewable energy required to meet the standard. Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, would like existing nuclear energy to receive the same treatment.

Higher-dose nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War is headed for the first time to a special facility in Carlsbad, New Mexico, officials say. A spokesman for the Los Alamos National Laboratory says the initial truckload of waste material left Los Alamos Tuesday afternoon for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, The New Mexican reports.

Many in sparsely populated Andrews County in West Texas embraced the idea of opening up a radioactive waste site there. They saw it as a chance to bring much needed jobs and tax dollars into the remote, sparsely populated West Texas county. Now, they're not so sure after the waste company asked the county to go a step further and come up with $75 million to pay for a disposal area at the site. Voters in the county on the New Mexico border will decide Saturday whether to help Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists fund construction of a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility. If passed, the measure would give county officials the ability to issue bonds to purchase $75 million of Waste Control Specialists' assets and lease them back to the company.

Owners of an idled Canon City uranium mill where contamination remains a problem are planning to reopen for business. The Cotter Corp. has told state officials they plan to process uranium from a New Mexico mine as early as 2014. The company would ship 12.5 million tons of ore by train to its site along the Arkansas River.

While their plant officially remains an environmental disaster, owners of a Cañon City uranium mill are pursuing a plan to reopen for nuclear business by hauling 12.5 million tons of ore by train from a protected mountain in New Mexico to refurbished facilities along the Arkansas River. Cotter Corp. executives have informed state officials they will crush and chemically leach 500,000 tons of uranium per year for 25 years - starting as soon as 2014 - "dependent upon market forces."

*Court upholds EPA ruling that mine site is on Navajo land *Mine would be subject to Clean Safe Drinking Water rules LOS ANGELES, April 17 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld a 2007 finding by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that the site of a uranium mine that Hydro Resources Inc plans to operate is on Navajo Nation land and subject to Safe Drinking Water Act regulations. Hydro Resources (HRI) plans to operate the underground injection mine on a 160-acre (65-hectare) site it owns in McKinley County, New Mexico, a few miles from Church Rock.

A Texas company is signaling its intent to turn a rural county near New Mexico into the home of the only dump in the United States that disposes of all classes of low-level radioactive waste from around the country. South Carolina shut its doors to nearly all the nation's low-level radioactive waste in July, leaving 36 states with no place to dispose of certain waste from nuclear power plants, hospitals and universities. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists LLC received a license from state regulators earlier this year to begin accepting commercial waste from Texas and Vermont. But the company wrote in an April 6 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it wants to dispose of waste from other states too.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad opened 10 years ago Thursday, and a decade later the storage of radioactive waste there continues to draw protests. Radioactive waste is stored at WIPP nearly 22 hundred feet under the southeastern New Mexico desert.

Nuclear watchdog groups are proposing that the U.S. reduce its nuclear weapons complex to just three sites - not to include SRS - as a step toward the nuclear weapons-free world that President Barack Obama envisioned in a speech days ago in Prague. "We have a different declared direction ... (that) makes our recommendations a whole lot more possible than they were before" Obama's speech Sunday, said Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, one of the authors of the report released Wednesday by the Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network. The watchdog groups have a proposal that would cut nuclear weapons work down to essential operations while the nation works toward "a world free of nuclear weapons," Coghlan said in a telephone news conference.

A southeastern New Mexico site near Hobbs has been chosen for a $93 million depleted uranium deconversion and fluorine extraction plant. Steve Laflin, president and chief executive officer of Idaho Falls, Idaho-based International Isotopes Inc., said groundbreaking is expected in 2011 on the 600-acre site about 15 miles west of Hobbs in Lea County.

The U.S. Department of Energy has applied to the Environmental Protection Agency to recertify its nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which turns 10 on Thursday, must seek recertification every five years to demonstrate that it complies with EPA regulations for disposing of radioactive waste. WIPP, excavated in salt beds 2,150 feet below the surface of the southern New Mexico desert, is designed for waste generated by the nation's defense work - largely such things as plutonium-contaminated rags, tools or clothing. The EPA first certified WIPP in May 1998, with the first 5-year certification period dating from March 26, 1999, when WIPP received its first shipment of waste. AddThis Social Bookmark Button Unrated You must be logged in to rate this story. Login or register Comments Terms of Use: We welcome your participation in our community. Please keep your comments civil and on point. You must be at least 13 years of age to post comments. By submitting a comment, you agree to these Terms of Service You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login or register Leave a comment @ Controls (Powered by JS-Kit) See all comments Close windowBranding NM Nuclear Waste Dump Seeks Recertification Leave a comment Leave a comment as: [logout] Loading... OpenID: Loading... Login: Password: Loading... Haloscan login: Haloscan password: Loading... Login: Password: Re-type Password: Nickname (required): Send replies to email: (if provided, email will not be displayed or shared) Avatars management: No avatars uploaded. Please use the form below to add avatars. Upload new avatar: Rating: Comment: Add pictures (Powered by JS-kit) (Spam filtering by Akismet) Leave a comment @ Controls (Powered by JS-Kit) Close window

"Los Alamos National Laboratory is nearly doubling its number of weekly shipments to the federal government's underground nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico. Lab officials say the campaign announced Thursday will eliminate a backlog of about 1,500 drums of transuranic waste that are awaiting shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. A crew from Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory will move temporarily to Los Alamos to double the lab's loading capacity. The loading facility also will move to a 7-day operation. Los Alamos lab usually completes four shipments per week to WIPP. That will increase to seven during the campaign. The transuranic waste consists of tools, rags, protective clothing, sludge, soil and other materials contaminated with radioactive elements."

"According to Homestake Project Manager Al Cox, he has been waiting for re-approval of the existing permit for several years and is now requesting a third pond, EP3, to speed up the process of reclamation. If approved by the New Mexico Environmental Department, EP3 would be constructed on HMC property on Sections 22 and 23, approximately 1,800 feet north of County Road 63. A 50-foot wide access corridor will be constructed to access the proposed pond and to locate piping and associated infrastructure to the pond area. Cox said that the pond can be constructed in 90 to 120 days and would cost approximately $2.5 million."

"Experts say uranium mining and milling in Pittsylvania County will lower property values, make it more difficult for farmers to sell their products and greatly increase residents' risks of illnesses and disease caused by living near a uranium mine. Also, the uranium deposit at Coles Hill northeast of Chatham is not 119-million pounds as mining proponents claim but just 5.5 million pounds, said Paul Robinson, research director at the Southwest Information & Research Center in Albuquerque, N.M. But another expert, Marita Noon, executive director of the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy in New Mexico, says Canada has been mining and milling uranium for years with no ill effects. "

"The U.S. Justice Department announced today that it has launched an "intensive outreach effort" in the Four Corners area to Native Americans and their families whose work in the uranium industry during the Cold War benefitted the United States but exposed them to radiation. Tony West, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in a news release that workers and their families may be entitled to compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). Under the act, people in the following categories may receive payments: uranium miners, millers and ore transporters; people who were present at nuclear weapons test sites; and people who lived in certain areas "downwind" of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. In the latest outreach in the Four Corners area - Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona - the Justice Department has developed an internship program using part-time college and graduate students recruited from tribal communities."

"A proposal to stiffen state requirements for cleaning up uranium processing facilities and notifying area residents of groundwater contamination passed on second reading in the state House Thursday. No one spoke in opposition to HB 1348, which will have its third and final reading on the House floor Monday, and two Republicans - Reps. Marsha Looper and Tom Massey - spoke in favor of the bill, which has bipartisan sponsorship and widespread support in the Arkansas River Valley and along the southern Front Range. Officials at the Cotter uranium mill in Cañon City, a facility with a history of water contamination violations, are considering refurbishing the plant to process ore from New Mexico beginning in 2014. Local activists want the EPA Superfund site fully cleaned up before such plans are considered. In other mining waste storage news, environmentalists Thursday condemned an Obama administration filing Tuesday supporting Bush administration rules allowing the mining industry greater latitude in disposing mining waste on public lands."