Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action

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INTRODUCTION TO URANIUM MILL TAILINGS
REMEDIAL ACTION PROGRAM OFFICE

Twenty-four designated Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) sites are located in 10 states, including Arizona (two sites), Colorado (nine sites), Idaho (one site), New Mexico (two sites), North Dakota (two sites), Oregon (one site), Pennsylvania (one site), Texas (one site), Utah (three sites), and Wyoming (two sites). The UMTRA Surface Project is managed out of the Albuquerque Operations Office located in New Mexico. The UMTRA Ground-Water Compliance Project is managed out of the Grand Junction Projects Office.

FACILITY MISSION

The United States Congress passed the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act in 1978 in response to public concern regarding potential health hazards of long-term exposure to radiation from uranium mill tailings. The Act authorized the Department of Energy to stabilize, dispose of, and control uranium mill tailings and other contaminated material at 24 uranium mill processing sites and approximately 5,200 associated vicinity properties.

During the 1950s and 60s, private firms processed most uranium ore mined in the United States for the Atomic Energy Commission, a predecessor of the Department of Energy. The processing plants were shut down, and the tailings piles from mill operations were abandoned. These sites presented a potential long-term health hazard because they contained low-level radioactive and other hazardous substances that migrated to surrounding soil, ground water, and surface water. Furthermore, the piles often emitted radon gas. The tailings and other contaminated material were also used as fill dirt or incorporated into various construction materials at thousands of offsite locations.

The goals of the UMTRA Program are to: (1) address immediate risk concerns and prevent further increases in relative risk at all sites; (2) complete surface remedial action work at all 24 mill tailings sites and related vicinity properties by FY 1998; and (3) complete ground-water activities in compliance with Environment Protection Agency standards no later than FY 2014.

The Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act directed the Environmental Protection Agency to promulgate cleanup standards (40 Code of Federal Regulations 192) and assigned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to oversee the cleanup and license the completed disposal cells. The responsibilities of the states and Tribes include (1) acting as an interface between the Department and the local community; (2) participating in public meetings; (3) acquiring real estate, where necessary; (4) interfacing with the Department on the environmental assessment; (5) reviewing remedial action plans; (6) concurring on supplemental standards; and (7) concurring that remedial action is complete. The Act also required the states to pay 10 percent of the remedial action and site acquisition costs.

The UMTRA program does not have any current or anticipated need for nuclear material and facility stabilization activities. The scope of environmental restoration includes all costs for waste management, program management, and landlord activities attributable to the Department of Energy.

FUTURE USE

Eleven of the 24 sites will employ a stabilize-in-place or stabilize-on-site disposal option. Portions of the sites not used by the disposal cell and its buffer area may be available for other uses but will likely maintain some form of land-use restriction. The Federal Government will maintain the portion of the site that contains the disposal cell under the Long-Term Surveillance and Maintenance program. Administration and costs associated with the Long-Term Surveillance and Maintenance program are provided for by the Grand Junction Projects Office. They are accounted for in the summary for that site in the Colorado section of this report.

Contamination at the 13 remaining sites will be excavated and disposed of offsite at remote disposal locations typically owned by the Department of Energy. These locations will also enter the Long-Term Surveillance and Maintenance program. Although these sites may be released without radiological restriction, the Department could enforce ground-water restrictions for many years. In most cases, the title to the portion of the site that does require institutional control by the Department will be transferred to the state or Tribe or remain with the original owners.

In all cases, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will review and approve the ground-water remedial action plan strategy for the site, before any decisions regarding its future use are made. The affected states and Tribes will actively participate in this decision.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION

The UMTRA program consists of two distinct projects, the Surface Project and the Ground-Water Compliance Project, which are directed by the Albuquerque Office and the Grand Junction Projects Office respectively. For clarity, this site summary has consolidated both projects. Costs for these activities have been apportioned to applicable sites. Under the provisions of the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act, the Department pays 100 percent of the cost of the assessment activities and 90 percent of the remedial action activities for both surface and ground-water projects. The affected states pay the remaining 10 percent of the remedial action costs, with the exception of those sites located on Indian Tribal lands, where the Department pays 100 percent of the costs.

The Edgemont, South Dakota site is the only UMTRA site that has no remaining Surface and/or Ground-water Project scope or open legal issues. There is no additional Department of Energy liability at this site. The mill was constructed in 1956 to extract uranium from uranium ore and was operated by a subsidiary of Susquehanna-Western, Inc. Vanadium processing capability was added in 1960. All processing was complete by 1974, and the owners stabilized the tailings and other contamination onsite prior to the enactment of the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act. Although the Edgemont site was not designated as one of the 24 UMTRA sites, a 1983 amendment to the Act required the Department to address the 135 vicinity properties associated with the Edgemont site. Material was removed from the vicinity properties and stabilized at the Edgemont site's Nuclear Regulatory Commission-licenced disposal cell. The current licensee is expected to turn the site over to the Grand Junction Projects Office's Long-Term Surveillance and Maintenance program in 1996.

The State of North Dakota has requested that the Department remove the Bellfield and Bowman sites from designation under the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act. All activities have been suspended pending their removal from the designation list. However, estimated costs and site summaries are provided for these sites to frame the potential scope of Department of Energy activities in the event that these sites are not delisted.

UMTRA Surface Project

Surface remedial action consists of stabilizing the tailings onsite or, in some cases, relocating the tailings to more remote locations. The tailings are covered with soil and rock to prevent radon release, control erosion or biointrusion, and to minimize infiltration of rain and snow that could leach contaminants through the pile into the ground water. Surface remedial action at the 24 sites includes the costs for applicable vicinity properties and remote disposal locations.

For the surface project at each site a Remedial Action Plan will be generated that will (1) present the series of activities that are proposed by the Department to accomplish long-term stabilization and control of the radioactive materials at the inactive processing site; (2) provide a characterization of the present conditions of the sites; (3) document the concurrence by the state or Tribe and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the remedial action plan; and (4) consolidate available engineering, radiological, geotechnical, hydrological, and other information pertinent to the remedial action.

The Long-Term Surveillance Plan, which describes how the disposal site will be managed, will be written concurrently with the each site's disposal cell Completion Report and final Audit Report. These two documents will be included as part of the Department's site Certification Report, which explains that the processing site has been cleaned up according to the provisions of the Remedial Action Plan. The site Certification Report and the Long-Term Surveillance Plan will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for concurrence as the first step towards licensing the disposal cell. Between the time that the remedial action is completed and the licensed site's surveillance activities are transferred to the Long-Term Surveillance and Maintenance Program, annual site inspections and custodial maintenance will be conducted under the UMTRA Surface Project's Pre-licensing Custodial Care activities. The prime objective will be to maintain cell integrity. Long-term surveillance of the disposal site will ensure that the cell continues to function as designed and that it continues to meet the licensing conditions. Also included will be general custodial maintenance, such as grass mowing and sign repair, and annual reports describing all site activities and findings, which will be provided to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, applicable state governments, and other affected parties.Future assessment efforts for the UMTRA Surface Project will center around investigating new vicinity properties (particularly the Grand Junction site) and the certification and licensing of all completed site remedial actions and disposal cells. Remediation will consist of completing the six sites started prior to FY 1995, starting the cleanup of the last five processing sites in FY 1995 and FY 1996, and completing cleanup of all sites by the end of FY 1998. Activities in FY 1999 will consist of finalization of site and vicinity property completion reports. Surface remedial action activities have been completed at 16 of the 24 sites, including: Ambrosia Lake, Canonsburg, Durango, Falls City, Grand Junction, Green River, Gunnison, Mexican Hat, Lakeview, Lowman, Monument Valley, Riverton, Shiprock, Salt Lake City, Spook, and Tuba City. The disposal cell at Grand Junction remains open to accept additional vicinity property material.Of the eight surface remedial action sites remaining, six are currently under way. As noted earlier, the State of North Dakota recently requested that the remaining two sites, Belfield and Bowman, be removed (delisted) from designation under the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act.

UMTRA Ground-Water Compliance Project

Former uranium processing activities at most of the 24 inactive mill sites resulted in contamination of ground water beneath, and in some cases, downgradient of the sites. This contaminated ground water often has elevated levels of contaminants such as uranium or nitrates.The UMTRA Ground-Water Compliance Project is currently in the planning stages and includes completing a baseline risk assessment for six sites and preparing site observational work plans for nine sites. In addition, ground-water monitoring activities will be conducted to ensure public safety. The project was established to achieve compliance with Environmental Protection Agency standards. A Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement will be used as a decision making framework for determining the project-wide ground-water compliance strategy. The UMTRA Ground-Water Project Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement analyzes the potential impacts of four alternatives for conducting the Ground- Water Project, including the proposed action. These alternatives do not address site-specific ground-water compliance strategies because the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement is a planning document only. It assesses the potential programmatic impacts of conducting the Ground-Water Project, provides a method for determining the site-specific ground water compliance strategies, and provides data and information that can be used to prepare site-specific environmental impacts analyses more efficiently. These proposed compliance strategies reflect the variety of ground-water conditions anticipated at the UMTRA sites and include No Further Action, No Action with Additional Characterization and/or Supplemental Standards or Alternate Concentration Limits, passive remediation (natural flushing), and engineered remedial actions. The draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement was published in the spring of 1995. In conjunction with that activity, the UMTRA Program is preparing site-specific baseline risk assessments. These assessments evaluate risks to human health and the environment by collecting field data and performing calculations and simulations. With one exception, the baseline risk assessments were complete in FY 1995. The last baseline risk assessment is scheduled for completion in FY 1996.

Site observational work plans for applicable sites began in FY 1994 and will continue through FY 2004 per the project schedule. These plans will define the technical scope, objectives, and strategies for the anticipated ground-water compliance activities at the site from characterization through engineering design and remediation. Site-specific environmental assessments, adhering to the framework defined in the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, will describe each site's compliance strategy. Because they follow the completion of the site observational work plans, preparation of environmental assessments will be initiated in FY 1996 and continue, according to the project schedule, through FY 2005.

The site-specific Remedial Action Plans will describe regulatory compliance strategies for the sites where active remediation strategies are proposed. The Remedial Action Plans will provide the information for States and Tribes to participate and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to concur upon the selection of the compliance strategy. Remedial Action Plans will be initiated just prior to finalization of environmental assessments and publishing of the Findings of No Significant Impacts in the Federal Register. They are scheduled to begin in FY 1997 and continue through FY 2007.

Although no decisions can be made prior to release of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, budget preparation requires that site-specific scenarios be addressed as described above. This estimate assumes that two sites will require active compliance strategies. The active remedial action at these sites will require certification by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they are complete. This report assumes that active remediation will begin in FY 2002 and will be complete by FY 2014.

The remaining sites would have passive (natural flushing) strategies imposed, No Action with Additional Characterization, Supplemental Standards or Alternate Concentration Limits, or No Further Action. For No Further Action or No Action with Additional Characterization and/or sites where Supplemental Standards or Alternate Concentration Limits can be applied, no monitoring will be conducted. If natural flushing is selected as the compliance strategy, verification monitoring will be conducted for a three-to-five year period, followed by compliance monitoring under the Long­Term Surveillance and Maintenance Program for up to 90 more years.

If an Active Remediation compliance strategy is selected, ground-water monitoring will be conducted during the remedial action to ensure that active remediation is working as predicted and to determine when compliance has been achieved.

For all types of ground-water compliance strategies, once the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determines that the site is in compliance with Subpart B of the Environmental Protection Agency Standards, no additional long-term surveillance or monitoring will be conducted for ground water.

DESCRIPTION OF PERSONNEL

Current staffing requirements presented in the table below represent the total work force for the overall UMTRA program. The federal work force consists of a manager and scientists. The contractor work force is a mix of professional staff and labor, who plan and perform the remediation of the various sites.

*The projections for Full-Time Equivalent employees are based on FY 1996 planning baselines (see Reader's Guide).

Site Management Structure

The UMTRA Ground-Water Project transferred from the Albuquerque Operations Office to the Grand Junction Projects Office on October 1, 1995. The surface project will continue to be supported by the technical assistance contract in place with Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc., which is scheduled to expire in 1996. This report assumes that only the portion of the contract supporting the surface project will be extended through completion of the surface project. The ground water project will be supported by the new Grand Junction support contract currently held by Rust Geotech beginning in April 1996. This contract will expire June 30, 1996 and is in the process of being rebid as two support services contracts, each with a three-year term and two one-year extensions.

COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS ESTIMATE

The 1996 life-cycle cost for the UMTRA Program is $500 million, which, after taking the 1995 expenditure into account, represents a three percent increase over the 1995 estimate of $579 million.