Clean up at a former Cold War-era uranium processing plant is nearly complete. A train carrying the final load of radioactive waste is now making its way from southwest Ohio to a disposal site in Utah. Tana Weingartner reports:
Transcript
Clean up at a former Cold War-era uranium processing plant is nearly complete. A train carrying the final load of radioactive waste is now making its way from southwest Ohio to a disposal site in Utah. Tana Weingartner reports:
It took three engines to slowly haul away the last 60 railcars full of radioactive dirt, concrete and debris. The waste came from the former Fernald Uranium processing facility in southwest Ohio. During the Cold War, workers at the top-secret plant processed uranium for nuclear weapons. Johnny Reising is the Fernald Site Director for the Department of Energy.
“It’s one of the largest waste shipping operations that the department of energy has had to date. There will probably be larger ones in the future, but to date this is the largest that’s taken place.”
Reising says the overall clean up is ahead of schedule and expected to cost about $70 million less than the projected $1.9 billion price tag.
Following completion, the D.O.E.’s Office of Legacy Management will maintain Fernald as an undeveloped park.
The Defense Department will be paying for a study to find ways to remove ammunition barrels the military dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. For 30 years, environmentalists have been asking the government to clean up the mess. Mike Simonson reports that the federal government is now paying for a study to find ways to remove the barrels:
Transcript
The Defense Department will be paying for a study to find ways to remove ammunition
barrels the military dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. For 30 years,
environmentalists have been asking the government to clean up the mess. Mike
Simonson reports that the federal government is now paying for a study to find ways to
remove the barrels:
The Red Cliff band of Lake Superior Chippewa will study ways
to remove the barrels of munitions. Documents show that between 1959
and 1962, the Department of Defense had 1,437 drums dumped into Lake
Superior. It amounts to about 400 tons of munitions containing toxic chemicals such as
PCBs, mercury, lead, chromium, benzene and even uranium.
Patricia DePerry is the Red Cliff Tribal Chairwoman. She says the barrels must be
removed:
“Not only the time is of essence, it’s the not knowing what the contaminants have been
doing at the bottom of the lake.”
DePerry says not only is the ecology of the lake at risk, but the barrels of munitions lie
within a quarter mile of Duluth, Minnesota’s drinking water intake.
Grassland prairie flowers from Weldon Spring, part of the Department of Energy's restoration effort to control erosion and add aesthetic beauty to the area. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)
Birdseye view of Weldon Spring disposal cell, which contains 1.48 million cubic yards of radioactive waste. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)
Another view of the disposal cell. The cell covers a massive 45 acres in Weldon Spring. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)
Across the U.S., there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.
The government is trying to return these Cold War relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery visited one that was recently opened to the public:
Transcript
Across the US, there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the
nation’s nuclear weapons programs. The government is trying to return these Cold War
relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much
like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery recently visited one that was recently
opened to the public…
A thick grove of trees opens up to a clearing that reveals a white mound of limestone
rock. It rises like a tomb from some long-forgotten civilization, were it not for the water
towers and golf courses on the horizon.
Mike Leahy and his 9-year-old son Cameron came to this rock dome to catch the view
atop its 75 foot summit. But the real attraction was what they did not see:
“We read the sign and saw what was buried and how they did it, and – it’s kind of
disturbing, what’s in there.”
Beneath their feet lay more than a million cubic yards of spent uranium, asbestos and
PCB’s. The 45 acre mound is a disposal cell, where the government buried thousands of
barrels and tons of debris. That history didn’t bother young Cameron:
“It’s really cool. They keep all that nuclear waste under all that and it can’t harm
anybody.”
The Weldon Spring site, 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri began during World War
Two as an Army TNT factory. In the 1950’s, the plant refined yellow cake uranium for
later use in nuclear weapons. All that stopped in 1966 and all the radioactive waste just
sat there. Weldon Spring became an EPA Superfund site in 1987. After a 900 million
dollar cleanup, the site was opened to tourists in 2002.
(Sound of frogs)
Today, frogs sing in a native prairie at the foot of the cell. In April, officials opened a
hiking trail adjacent to a once-radioactive landfill. The route connects to a state park.
Weldon Spring is not a park per se, but project manager Yvonne Deyo says urban sprawl
prompted them to think like one:
“There’s subdivisions and lots of infrastructure going in…and that just kind of hits home
how important green space is, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to do a little bit of
here at the site.”
Weldon Spring is one of about 100 such sites the Department of Energy is converting to
what it calls “beneficial re-use.” Many are becoming recreational venues. Another
closed uranium plant near Cincinnati is adding horseback riding trails. In Wayne, New
Jersey, a former thorium processing facility is becoming a baseball field. And a national
wildlife preserve is in the works at Rocky Flats, the site outside Denver that made the
plutonium cores of nuclear warheads.
The Department of Energy says Weldon Spring is safe for visitors – though some residual
contamination remains.
(Sound of Burgermeister Spring)
Burgermeister Spring runs through a 7-thousand acre state reserve adjacent to the site.
This is where uranium-laced groundwater from Weldon Spring rises to the surface.
Though the spring exceeds the EPA’s drinking water quality standard, there’s no warning
sign here. Officials say the contamination is so low that it poses no immediate public
hazard. The spring feeds into one of the most popular fishing lakes on the property.
Most visitors are surprised to hear that:
“Huh.”
Jeff Boeving fishes for bass four or five times a month:
“(Does that concern you to hear that?) Yeah – absolutely…I mean, they’ve got a great
area out here and they’re kind of messing it up if they’re going to have contaminants, you know, going into it.”
The government’s vision of post-nuclear playgrounds is not without its critics. Arjun
Makhijani heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park,
Maryland. He says recreational sites near urban development zones risk losing their
original purpose:
“Institutional memory tends to be very short; after 30, 40, 50 years people forget, they
begin to develop the land, and pretty soon you could have houses, farms and schools in
the area. So it’s not necessary that it will stay recreational forever.”
Recreation is only one option the Department of Energy is considering for all of its sites.
In the last two years, the agency’s budget has doubled with the addition of nearly a dozen
radioactive properties. Officials say Congress has so far supported its fiscal requests.
And with the future of a proposed permanent nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain still
in doubt, even more tax dollars will likely be spent converting the nuclear dumps in
America’s backyards to a place where families play.
Salamanders are a good indicator of wetland health. (Photo courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife)
Government workers are slogging around in man-made wetlands.
looking for salamanders. Back in the 1950’s, the United States government
selected a plot of land to be the home of its newest uranium processing plant.
Since the end of the Cold War, the now-closed nuclear processing plant has
been undergoing the long and arduous task of returning to its natural wetland
state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tana Weingartner reports on the search for salamanders at the site, and why
their presence is so important:
Transcript
Government workers are slogging around in man-made wetlands looking for salamanders. Back in the 1950’s, the United States government selected a plot of land to be the home of its newest uranium processing plant. Since the end of the Cold War, the now-closed nuclear processing plant has been undergoing the long and arduous task of returning to its natural wetland state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tana Weingartner reports on the search for salamanders at the site, and why their presence is so important:
It’s a cold, windy day in late March as specialists from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency head out to check their traps at the Fernald Nuclear Plant. The 1050-acre facility sits in a rural area just 18 miles north of Cincinnati. Although the EPA is in charge of cleaning up the uranium contamination here, today they’re on a different mission. Today they’re hunting salamanders.
“Salamanders basically are a sign of an established wetland usually, and in this case would show that we put a wetland in a location where salamanders need additional breeding habitat.”
In other words, Schneider says the presence of salamanders indicates the first level of success for these manmade wetlands. The wetland project is one of several ways the EPA is ensuring Fernald is properly restored to its natural state.
“Well, we’re looking forward to the day when we get the site cleaned up, and it can be like a land lab, and people can bring kids out here and do environmental education on the importance of wetlands, and it’s going to make a great contrast with what used to be here and the environmental contamination with the environmental benefit the facility is providing down the road.”
Today, the site is 70 percent certified clean, and officials expect to finish the cleanup by June 2006. Creating healthy wetlands full of insects, amphibians and salamanders is one of the first steps to success.
“So the method here is to set ten traps equidistant, hopefully, around the perimeter of the wetland. And they’re passive traps, whereby animals that are moving over the course of the 24 hours or so that the traps have been in, will bump into the traps and it’s a funnel that directs them into the center part of the trap, and they’re held in there until we release them.”
(splashing sound)
Schneider and his team laugh and joke as they pull the traps up by brightly colored ribbons. Train horns and construction noises mix with bird calls – one a reminder of what has been, the other a sign of what’s to come.
“That’s probably a one-year-old bullfrog there and then these big guys are dragonfly larvae and these other guys are back swimmers. Mayfly larvae and dragonfly larvae are both good indicators of high water quality.”
The third pond, or vernal pool, turns up 46 tadpoles and a tiny peeper frog, but no salamanders.
(truck door slams)
So it’s back in the truck and on down the dirt road to where several more wetland pools sit just across from the on-site waste dump. That dump will be Fernald’s lasting reminder of its former use. These pools are younger and less established, but they do offer hope. Last year, adult salamanders were found in the one closest to a clump of trees.
Each spring, as the snow melts away and temperatures rise, salamanders venture out in the first 50-degree rain to begin their search for a mate. Schneider had hoped warm temperatures in late February and early March prompted “The Big Night,” as it’s known.
“So, no salamanders today?”
“No salamanders today. I think we learned a little bit about the difference between wetlands that are three years old. We saw a lot more diversity in the macroinvertebrates, the insect population, than we have down here.”
Perhaps the salamanders haven’t come yet, or maybe they have already come and gone, leaving behind the still un-hatched eggs. Either way, the team will check back again in April and a third time in late May or June.
“And we have high hopes, high hopes, high apple pie in the sky hopes. That’s the kind.”
In the United States, low-level nuclear waste is stored in landfills. An Ontario town is proposing to put Canada's low-level nuclear waste in an underground chamber a mile from Lake Huron. (Photo courtesy of the NRC)
In Canada, just across Lake Huron from
Michigan, a small town is offering to be the home of
Canada’s first permanent dump site for radioactive
material. The proposed site is a mile from Lake
Huron. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann
Colihan reports on the town’s work to
get the site and the concerns about putting it close
to one of the Great Lakes:
Transcript
In Canada, just across Lake Huron from Michigan, a small town is offering to be the home of Canada’s first permanent dump site for radioactive material. The proposed site is a mile from Lake Huron. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan reports on the town’s work to get the site and the concerns about putting it close to one of the Great Lakes:
Right now, Canada has nowhere to permanently store its low-level and intermediate-level nuclear waste. This waste is not spent nuclear fuel from power plants. It’s contaminated material that’s been exposed to radioactive substances. It could be anything from the protective clothing workers wear at nuclear power plants to parts from reactors, anything that’s been exposed to radioactivity.
The Ontario town of Kincardine – located about 250 miles north of Detroit – has proposed that it be the site of a nuclear waste dump.
So why would a beach town want a nuclear dump?
Kincardine is also a company town. It’s home to the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant. Eighty-percent of the folks who live there work in the nuclear industry. Larry Kraemer is the former mayor. He explains why the permanent dump is essential for the local economy.
“The Bruce nuclear power plant, which is the biggest nuclear power development in North America as well as the largest local employer and one of the largest Canadian investment in any industry that there is.”
Because Kincardine knows the nuclear industry, the residents aren’t afraid to take on these jobs.
But no one ever asked the question if burying nuclear waste a mile from Lake Huron was the best location in Ontario to put the waste site. Frank King is the Director of Nuclear Waste Management and Engineering Technology for Ontario Power Generation, also known as OPG. He says Kincardine does not have to be the best site for the dump.
“It’s not an issue of whether it’s the best. Nobody has to say it’s best. It just has to be shown that it’s safe; that it’s a good site. There is no requirement to show that it’s the best site.”
OPG already stores low and intermediate-level waste from all twenty Ontario reactors at the Bruce Power plant in Kincardine. But above ground storage is getting tight. OPG began looking at its options and with Kincardine’s “bring it on” attitude it seemed like a good place to start.
OPG paid for members of the Kincardine city council to visit nuclear waste storage sites around the world. Councillors came back especially impressed with how the Swedes do it. They bury their nuclear waste in solid granite.
But the stone below Kincardine is not granite. It’s limestone – and no place in the world uses limestone to contain nuclear waste. William Fyfe is Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Ontario. He has spent decades studying geology and nuclear waste around the globe.
“Limestone can be much more porous than granite. It has no ability to absorb nasty elements, like you get with some clay minerals and things, to absorb all the dirty chemical species like uranium, for example.”
He does not like the idea of a man-made cavern full of nuclear waste near the Great Lakes.
“Just because you made the waste doesn’t mean you should put it in your backyard. There may be a better place.”
Local environmentalists agree. Given OPG’s record, they don’t trust that the waste dump will be safe. Jennifer Heisz is a founder of the public interest group, Woman’s Legacy, which is focused on the impact of the Bruce nuclear plant on Lake Huron. She says when she requested environmental records from Ontario, she found evidence that the regulators haven’t done a good job of stopping pollution at the plant.
“I received approximately 10 or 15 reports regarding leaking waste sites and the levels coming from the plant were very high – sometimes at 45 times the provincial level for chromium. Vanadium was also one of the chemicals that was contaminating the groundwater and it’s found to be mutagenic to animals.”
Heisz says if OPG is polluting at its existing dump sites, what’s to keep the agency from doing a poor job of storing nuclear waste underground? Ontario regulators say they plan to conduct an environmental assessment. Heisz and her environmental group are raising money for an independent review of deep nuclear storage. The geologist, Professor Fyfe, thinks Kincardine should hold an open house to get the opinions of experts.
“Before we start putting stuff away, let’s invite the bosses of the Swedish group to come and take a look. They are using hundreds of scientists, technicians, and engineers which we are not doing in Canada.”
Few outside the Kincardine area are aware of their nuclear waste dump plans… and fewer still know the site is planned for so close to Lake Huron.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Ann Colihan.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is reviewing a plan for building a uranium enrichment plant in Ohio. Supporters of the plant welcome the jobs, but many others are worried about radioactive waste. (Photo courtesy of the NRC)
Nuclear power plants need enriched uranium to produce power. Today, there’s only one uranium enrichment facility operating in the U.S. Now, there’s a proposal to build a new one in southern Ohio. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight reports, there’s debate over how safe the proposed plant will be:
Transcript
Nuclear power plants need enriched uranium to produce power.
Today, there’s only one uranium enrichment facility operating in the
U.S. Now, there’s a proposal to build a new one in southern Ohio.
And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight reports, there’s
debate over how safe the proposed plant will be:
The one-point-five billion dollar project is planned by USEC, Incorporated, the world’s largest producer of enriched uranium. Company officials say it would generate 500 jobs and be built at the site of an old, off-line uranium enrichment plant. Charles Wiltshire is still employed there and he’s all for building the new facility.
“I would like to see future job opportunities for my children and grandchildren who will be finishing college about the time the centrifuge plant is due to go online.”
But environmentalists and concerned citizens are worried about the radioactive waste. They’re also fearful of water pollution and health hazards for plant workers. The State of Ohio has promised more than 100 million dollars in financial incentives and is confident that the new plant will not put anyone in danger. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the company’s application and is supposed to make a decision by early 2007.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Fred Kight.
As many as eight new nuclear reactors might be built over the next twenty years if recommendations are acted on north of the border. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports… dwindling energy supplies have put Ontario’s new government in a corner, and political leaders say there may be little choice but to build more nuclear plants:
Transcript
As many as eight new nuclear reactors might be built over the next twenty years if
recommendations are acted on north of the border. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan
Karpenchuk reports, dwindling energy supplies have put Ontario’s new government in a corner,
and political leaders say there may be little choice but to build more nuclear plants:
Dwight Duncan is Ontario’s new Energy Minister.
And in a recent speech to business leaders in Toronto, he said his biggest challenge is to rebuild
the province’s capacity to provide power over the next twenty years.
His government has promised to close coal burning generating stations by 2007. In addition, all
of the province’s nuclear plants will reach the end of their natural lives by about 2020 unless
they’re refurbished. Government officials predict a huge energy shortfall unless decisions are
made soon.
And Duncan says that could mean more nuclear plants, despite opposition from
environmentalists.
“Absolutely, there’s a body of opinion in this province that I imagine would oppose any nuclear,
and that will be a debate if we go down that route, we will all have to engage in.”
Atomic Energy of Canada, a federal government corporation, is pushing a 12-billion dollar
proposal to build four pairs of new nuclear reactors in Ontario over the next twenty years. Those
plants would produce energy at a cost cheaper than natural gas fired plants or wind energy. The
problem is that they represent a new generation of reactors that use more enriched uranium than
their predecessors.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.
The U-S Department of Energy will dispose of spent nuclear fuel instead of reprocessing it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… some environmentalists and anti-nuke groups are applauding the decision:
In the wake of the recent Japanese and Korean nuclear accidents, North
American experts were quick to point out that it couldn’t happen here.
Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston disagrees:
A Sea Grant researcher in Ohio has genetically engineered a
single-celled algae to work as a pollution solution. The algae binds
with heavy metals in lakes and then is harvested. The metals are removed
with the algae. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Aileen LeBlanc has
the story:
