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Contaminated NM soil trucked into southern Colo. - KWES NewsWest 9 / Midland, Odessa, Big Spring, TX: newswest9.com |
A Utah company is defending its decision to truck contaminated soil from Los Alamos National Laboratory into southern Colorado.
Last week, EnergySolutions began shipping the soil by truck to Antonito, where it is loaded on to rail cars. The load is then shipped by rail to Walsenburg and then on to a storage facility in Clive, Utah, 74 miles west of Salt Lake City.
The soil is from an area where conventional weapons were tested and contains depleted uranium and PCBs.
Antonito is about 100 miles from Los Alamos and residents questioned why EnergySolutions didn't truck the soil to a closer railhead. The company says other transfer stations didn't work because they added more rail miles and because of a lack of daily rail service and multiple switching requirements.
Pueblo Chieftain: Utah company defends rail transfer at Antonito
An official with the Utah company shipping contaminated soil from Los Alamos National Laboratory defended the company's decision to transfer its shipments from truck to rail at Antonito.
"The Antonito transfer point is the closest viable option to Los Alamos," EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said. "Other transfer point options were inferior largely due to an increase in rail miles required, lack of daily rail service or multiple railroad switching requirements."
Pueblo Chieftain Online: Hazardous waste being hauled into state
A Salt Lake City company that ships hazardous waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory agreed Thursday to suspend their transfer operation at Antonito for two days, while alarmed Conejos County officials decide how to regulate the operation.
On Tuesday, EnergySolutions, which specializes in the recycling and disposal of nuclear material, began hauling contaminated soil by truck to Antonito where it transfers the waste to the San Luis & Rio Grande for shipment on to a company storage site in Clive, Utah.
Mike Williams, the company's project manager, said the company hopes to ship up to 36 bags per day.
He said they will contain up to 15,000 pounds per bag of soil contaminated with depleted uranium and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. But the county officials and residents, who found out about the project through word of mouth, were anything but generous toward the company's plans.
Cibola Beacon - Comments sought for mine cleanup
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.
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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 Taxpayer Shouldn't be Burned Again in LANL's Inadequate Fire Protection Program - POGO Blog
As usual, last week there was an interesting article in the Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor. In “Pu Work Curtailed Because Of Fire Sprinkler Issues,” the Monitor’s Todd Jacobson reported that “Los Alamos National Laboratory [LANL] curtailed programmatic work in the lab’s Plutonium Facility, putting the facility in 'standby mode' for a month from early October to Nov. 5 because of concerns about the adequacy of fire sprinkler coverage.”
On the bright side, the problem that 13 of 100 areas (130 sprinklers) in the facility were not adequately covered by the sprinkler system was discovered before there was a fire in one of those areas. On the not-so-bright side, two weeks ago, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) found that the facility would be vulnerable to a catastrophic fire in the case of a severe earthquake. However, it does not take an earthquake to start a fire in a glove box that could spread.
Independent: EPA says Churchrock cleanup delayed
After receiving overwhelming opposition to a cleanup plan for the Northeast Churchrock Mine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is going back to the local community to try to work through concerns. The Navajo Nation wants complete removal of an estimated 900,000 cubic yards of radium-contaminated soils.
U.S. EPA and former mine operator United Nuclear Corp., a subsidiary of General Electric, have opted for total removal of the most highly radioactive waste to an approved repository, possibly in Idaho, while low-level waste would be moved to the former UNC Mill, a Superfund site that eventually will be turned over to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Legacy Management for lifetime monitoring.
The Navajo Times Online - Uranium miners, widows get warm reception
It was a very belated thank-you, but appreciated nonetheless.
Some 300 former uranium workers and their family members braved an icy wind Oct. 30 to gather at tiny Cove Chapter and celebrate the first ever National Day of Remembrance for the nation's "Cold War patriots."
Cove was one of 13 communities selected from across the country to host the historic celebration in response to a Senate resolution in March setting aside Oct. 30 as a day to honor those who worked in the country's uranium mines and mills.
The House has yet to pass similar legislation, but is being lobbied heavily by the Cold War Patriots, an organization that advocates for uranium workers of the 1940s-70s.
Cibola Beacon - Uranium miners honored at remembrance event
The first annual National Day of Remembrance in honor of former uranium and nuclear workers was observed Friday at the Cibola Convention Center.
Locally the ceremony was organized by the Cold War Patriots, a non-profit advocacy group for those who worked in the uranium and weapons industries. You may have noticed a couple of PT Cruisers painted with a Cold War Patriots motif around town and wondered, as we did, what this group's mission was.
Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources -- latimes.com
More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico.
Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest.
So far, the level of contamination in the Rio Grande has not been high enough to raise health concerns. But the monitoring of runoff in canyons that drain into the river has found unsafe concentrations of organic compounds such as perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket propellent, and various radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission.
NM Reaches Uranium Waste Storage Agreement - Albuquerque News Story - KOAT Albuquerque
New Mexico officials and International Isotopes Inc. have reached an agreement that will limit the amount of waste that can be stored at the company's planned uranium deconversion plant in southeastern New Mexico.
The company plans to build a plant near Hobbs that would convert depleted uranium into certain types of acid and gas that could be used for industrial manufacturing applications.
Uranium waste would be disposed of at a licensed facility outside New Mexico.
Environment Secretary Ron Curry said the agreement will protect the environment and area residents while allowing the company to operate in the state.
Native American Uranium Miners Still Suffer, As Industry Eyes Rebirth - Working In These Times
On the Navajo Nation, almost everyone you talk to either worked in uranium mines themselves or had fathers or husbands who did. Almost everyone also has multiple stories of loved ones dying young from cancer, kidney disease and other ailments attributed to uranium poisoning.
The effects aren’t limited to uranium miners and millers; whole families are usually affected as women washed their husbands’ contaminated clothes, kids played amidst mine waste and families even built homes out of radioactive uranium tailings.
A new demand for uranium power brings concerns for Navajo groups - washingtonpost.com
Uranium from the Grants Mineral Belt running under rugged peaks and Indian pueblos of New Mexico was a source of electric power and military might in decades past, providing fuel for reactors and atomic bombs.
Now, interest in carbon-free nuclear power is fueling a potential resurgence of uranium mining. But Indian people gathered in Acoma, N.M., for the Indigenous Uranium Forum over the weekend decried future uranium extraction, especially from nearby Mount Taylor, considered sacred by many tribes. Native people from Alaska, Canada, the Western United States and South America discussed the severe health problems uranium mining has caused their communities, including high rates of cancer and kidney disease.
Independent: Risky business: Could Utah be an option for Churchrock mine cleanup?
Could Utah be an option for Churchrock mine cleanup?
CHURCHROCK — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not believe there will be a problem with shipping steel piping contaminated with special nuclear material cross-country from a former uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to EnergySolutions in Utah. But when it comes to disposal of 900,000 cubic yards of radium- and uranium-contaminated waste from the Northeast Churchrock Mine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found numerous arguments for leaving it on the Navajo Nation — an alternative tribal officials and the Churchrock community say is not an option.
EnergySolutions, formerly Envirocare of Clive, Utah., is seeking a fifth amendment to a 1999 order from the NRC that allowed it to possess special nuclear material below specified concentrations. The federal agency has prepared an environmental assessment and has concluded that a “finding of no significant impact” is appropriate.
Cibola Beacon - Natives to meet to fight uranium development
Indigenous people from across North America will meet in Acoma in late October to launch a campaign to end recent efforts to resume uranium mining, which is seen as a threat to Indian lands in several Native locations across the country.
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The Seventh Indigenous Uranium Forum was established in 1987 with conferences on the environmental and health effects of uranium development in the Grants Mineral Belt.
Since its inception the forum has developed as a vehicle for strategy development and coordination of communities along the lifeline of nuclear power, from uranium mining in Grants to nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
A statement from the forum reads, “The 7th Southwest Indigenous Uranium Forum will focus on the recent onslaught of exploratory measures to mine and mill uranium in the Grants Mineral Belt. Due to recent price fluctuations of uranium on the world market and U.S. policy still emphasizing nuclear power as an answer to global warming and climate change, we will inform and educate participants of local, national and international nuclear issues impacting Indigenous people.”
There will also be presentations on health issues affecting both mining and non-mining populations in the affected communities.
Navajo Yellowcake Woes Continue | Mother Jones
When the EPA evacuates your town for Superfund cleanup, what happens to the people left behind?
After decades of uranium mining turned the tiny town of Church Rock, New Mexico, into a Superfund site, in August the EPA moved seven resident Navajo families to Gallup apartments, where they'll wait for five months while the EPA scrubs their town of radioactive waste. But as the EPA hauls away the uranium tailings and radium-infused topsoils that have been permanent fixtures since mining ceased in the 1980s, Church Rock's remaining residents are asking why they have been left behind. In 1979, the largest spill of radioactive waste in US history occurred in Church Rock when 94 million gallons of mine waste were accidentally released into a stream. Children swam in open pit mines and the community drank water from local wells as recently as the '90s. (Now they haul in drinking water.) Cancer rates and livestock deaths remain higher than they should be. As for the families who remain, Church Rock evacuee and local activist Teddy Nez says the agency "drew an imaginary line in the sand" that excludes a residential area half a mile west of the Superfund site.
New Mexico Independent » N.M. plays role in moving nuclear materials around the country
Want to know what a top-secret truck moving “special nuclear materials” around the country looks like?
Check out this photo, which comes from a blog at the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. The photo was released after a Freedom of Information Act request from an environmental group.
“It’s big and blue – and rumbling down an interstate near you. But if you were parked next to a nuclear warhead at the gas station, would you know it?” writes Chronicle reporter Robert Pavey.
The Chronicle covers the Savannah River Site (SRS), a big-bomb producing facility back in the day, by which I mean the Cold War era. The Chronicle just published a series of stories on SRS’s critical role in disposing of plutonium from about 10,000 dismantled bombs.
So what does this top-secret transporting of nuclear materials have to do with New Mexico?
Patience, patience.
www.KOB.com - Waste shipment from Calif. completed at Carlsbad
The first shipment of nuclear waste byproduct has been delivered to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the southeastern corner of New Mexico.
The Department of Energy said the shipment arrived safely early Friday morning.
The DOE estimates that about 30-40 shipments will be sent from a facility in California to WIPP.
The waste is a byproduct of the nation's nuclear defense program. It consists of tools, rags, protective clothing, sludge, soil and other materials contaminated with radioactive elements that have atomic numbers greater than uranium.
The material arrives by truck in lead-lined casks certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Independent - Study: Health risks increased near mines
Residents living close to uranium mines, especially large mines, are more likely to have kidney disease, hypertension, diabetes, and autoimmune disease, according to a University of New Mexico health researcher.
Johnnye Lewis, Ph.D., principal investigator for the DiNEH Network for Environmental Health Project and director of the Community Environmental Health Program at the UNM Health Sciences Center, briefed a joint state Indian Affairs/Radiation and Hazardous Materials Committee Thursday at UNM on results of an ongoing study.
Uranium Resources Terminates Agreement to Acquire New Mexico Properties | Reuters
Uranium Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ: URRE) (URI) announced today that it has terminated the agreement for the acquisition of certain assets in New Mexico from NZ Uranium, LLC because of the existence of title issues that were not resolved. The Company had previously announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire the properties subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions, including a title review. The properties were believed to contain about 35 million pounds of uranium mineralized material. Paul K. Willmott, Chairman of the Board, commented, "It is unfortunate that this is the result, but we determined that it would be imprudent to proceed any further." About Uranium Resources, Inc. Uranium Resources Inc. explores for, develops and mines uranium. Since its incorporation in 1977, URI has produced over 8 million pounds of uranium by in-situ recovery (ISR) methods in the state of Texas where the Company currently has ISR mining projects. URI has 183,000 acres of uranium mineral holdings, 101.4 million pounds of in-place mineralized uranium material in New Mexico and an NRC license to produce up to 3 million pounds of uranium. The Company acquired these properties over the past 20 years along with an extensive information database of historic mining logs and analysis.
Los Alamos National Lab Missing 67 Computers - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership
New Mexico-based Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) , the nation's leading nuclear weapons lab, once again finds itself the focus of concerns about potentially serious cybersecurity lapses.
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) , a watchdog group, Wednesday released a memo from the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) expressing concern over the theft of three computers from the home of an employee at Los Alamos National Security LLC (LANS) in January.
LANS is a limited liability company comprising the University of California at Oakland, Bechtel National Inc. and two other firms that have been managing LANL since 2006.
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