do recovery between ohio and texas? hazmat comming

I am just spitballing here, but im guessing that on average- out of 2,500 trucks hauling the same load over 1,300 miles on the same route over a years time, one or two of them is bound to break down or screw up somehow some way. So watch out- one of you between ohio and texas, might be cleaning up radioactive waste. So good luck to the lucky tower, get some training in hazmat and radioactive waste and take pictures!

From many web news sites this is available. This excerpt is from: http://media.bonnint.net/apimage/CD10406062114.jpgRadioactive Waste From Ohio Going to Texas

In this photo provided by Fluor Fernald, two steel canisters containing radioactive waste mixed with fly ash and concrete, on a truck bound for a storage site in Andrews, Texas, are inspected, Monday, June 6, 2005, outside Cincinnati. The truck left the long-closed Fluor Fernald plant site about 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati around noon on its journey. (AP Photo/Fluor Fernald, David Hinaman)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7709778/

 

David Hinaman / Fluor Fernald via AP

 

 

Uranium byproduct waste from an Ohio plant would be transported in these containers, possibly to a West Texas town

 

From: http://news.corporate.findlaw.com/ap/o/632/05-24-2005/f35f0027e823d0fd.html

By BETSY BLANEY Associated Press Writer

(AP) - LUBBOCK, Texas-Trucks toting tons of Cold War-era uranium byproduct waste from a shuttered plant in Ohio will begin their 1,300-mile journey to Texas this month, taking a route chosen to minimize risk in case of an accident.

The Ohio plant processed and purified uranium metal for use in reactors to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons from the 1950s until 1989. The waste will be transported to a site near the Texas-New Mexico line in about 5,000 large, sealed containers filled with a concrete mixture.

The material does not pose a great risk to humans, said Jeff Wagner, a spokesman for Fluor Fernald, the U.S. Department of Energy contractor cleaning up the former Fernald plant just outside Cincinnati.

Should an accident occur, first responders would deal with it like a hazardous materials spill, he said. "From a radiation standpoint, it's not going to kill people," Wagner said, adding that there are greater risks from chemicals, gasoline and acids being carried on the nation's roadways.

That argument hasn't mollified environmentalists.

"The evidence out there is that just like any shipments, there's potential for accidents," Sierra Club spokesman Cyrus Reed said. "This material is so long lasting, and the results aren't necessarily imminent but they're more chronic in nature."

Visionary Solutions, LLC, an Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based company, will transport the radioactive waste, but Fernald is responsible for preparing the material before it's loaded onto flatbed trucks.

In 1998, DOE inspectors reported that Fernald failed to provide strong, tight containers and proper supervision to the waste transport program when moving radioactive waste to the DOE's Nevada Test Site just outside Las Vegas. The report came after leaks developed in the containers in 1997. No contamination occurred, but shipments stopped for 18 months.

Since then, shipping containers have been redesigned, quality control is more rigorous and there is increased focus on transportation issues, Wagner said.

But in March 2002, 70 mph winds just outside Laramie, Wyo., blew over a Fernald truck that carried two one-liter padded containers of a liquid solution of plutonium and neptunium inside the cab.

The material, which is used for calibrating instruments and analyzing samples that might contain radioactive materials, was going to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory near Idaho Falls. No radioactivity was released and no one was injured.

In the latest shipments, at least two Texas-bound trucks will leave Ohio during the week of May 30, Wagner said. The trip will take between two and four days. Each truck is designed to carry two containers, each weighing an average of 20,000 pounds, and will be tracked by global positioning satellites. Trucks will make trips to Texas through the end of the year.

The route was chosen for travel time, distance and population along the way to minimize the risk, Wagner said. The trucks will primarily use interstates and they will travel around Indianapolis, St. Louis and East St. Louis, Ill., and Oklahoma City on highway bypasses. The trucks will enter Texas on Interstate 40 and travel through Amarillo and Lubbock to get to the site in Andrews, just north of Odessa.

Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists won a $7.5 million contract from Fernald in late April to store the waste - two months after state officials granted the company a license amendment that expanded the site's storage capacity to 1.5 million cubic feet - nearly five times its current size - making it eligible to accept the Ohio waste.

The Sierra Club has requested a hearing to contest the license change. A hearing before an administrative judge in Austin is set for July 11.

Waste Control also seeks a license to dispose of the Ohio waste. Without the license, the waste can remain at the Texas site for only two years

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/1D6508C16E54619B86257016000F68B5?OpenDocument

___________________________________________________________________________

This picture from October 1954 shows the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works plant at 65 Destrehan Street in St. Louis.
(Post-Dispatch file photo

Radioactive waste will roll through area

By Elizabethe Holland

Of the Post-Dispatch

06/04/2005

)

Beginning Monday and extending through the end of the year, trucks loaded with thousands of tons of radioactive waste will pass through the St. Louis area on their way to a temporary resting place in Texas.

More than half of the waste will be making its second visit here. It came from the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works on the riverfront just north of downtown. Mallinckrodt, an atomic-age pioneer, altered the course of World War II by developing a way to purify uranium to the grade needed to make the atomic bomb.

After the war - in the 1950s - 6,000 tons of radioactive byproducts from the processing were shipped to a uranium processing plant northwest of Cincinnati, where it was kept in silos. There it has stayed for the last half-century. But now the Department of Energy is intent on cleaning up the site at Fernald, Ohio, and shutting it down for good because it's located near a major water supply and heavily populated areas. That means finding yet another home for the waste.

The department has chosen a temporary site in Texas, which means that the waste will be carted on flatbed trailers and sent along highways that snake through the Metro East area, south St. Louis County and westward to Texas. The site in Texas is not near a water supply and is in a less populated area. It is also drier in Texas, and so drainage problems from the site would be minimal.

Radiation coming from radioactive waste can cause cancer and genetic damage. Experts have long differed on how much exposure is dangerous. The waste coming from Cincinnati will be shipped in secured steel containers, and the material inside is encased in concrete. Those involved in the shipping say hazardous material in containers far less secure moves on the nation's highways every day.

Unconvinced is Kay Drey, a local activist and board member of the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service. She notes the irony of having the waste return to the Gateway City, even if it is only passing through. And she and other environmentalists are not at all pleased that it will make a 1,300-mile trek across the country, particularly when its destination is a place it may remain for only two years.

"They're moving from one temporary disposal facility in this massive attack on our highways to another temporary facility, and with no permanent place to go - and placing people at risk ... everywhere along the way," said Drey, of University City.

The contractor in charge of the move, Fluor Fernald, also would prefer to ship the waste to a permanent site. But spokesmen for the company said the material could be moved safely.

"You always hate to speculate when it comes to what's vulnerable out on the road, but we'll argue there are things that are traveling across the interstate every day that would make more of a statement than a concrete block in a steel casing," said Jeff Wagner of Fluor Fernald.

"Everything we can do from a personal health and safety standpoint is being considered on this, and certainly the same holds true for environmentally."

15 trucks a day

The move will begin with one truck taking to the highway Monday. Eventually, though, Fluor Fernald plans to move 15 trucks per day, with each truck carrying two 20,000-pound containers of encased waste. The trucks will run seven days a week through December. In all, Fluor Fernald expects to move 4,000 containers, said Dennis Carr, the project director.

The containers, riveted shut when full, are made of half-inch-thick carbon steel and measure 6 1/2 feet tall and 6 feet in diameter. Empty, each weighs 4,000 pounds.

In each will be a combination of radioactive waste, concrete and flyash - a fine black ash produced in a coal-fired boiler plant, according to Wagner. Radioactive waste from two of Fernald's silos will make up about 20 percent of each container, with concrete and flyash making up the other 80 percent, Wagner said. The waste - byproducts of ores that were exceptionally rich in uranium from the former Belgian Congo - includes radium, thorium, lead, polonium and actinium.

The trucks will be outfitted with global positioning systems, and authorities who would respond to possible emergencies involving the shipments have been informed of what is coming their way, Carr said.

"There's no expectation of a problem, but in the event that there is, we're prepared to deal with it," he said.

Lee Sobotka, a Washington University professor of nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics, said the waste's packaging falls short of being as safe as it could be. He would rather see the waste undergo vitrification - a process that would turn it into a glasslike product that many scientists feel would remain more stable over time.

But if Fluor Fernald takes no shortcuts in preparing and packaging the waste, risks to public safety while the waste is in transit are low, Sobotka said.

Sobotka would also prefer to see the material delivered to a permanent site.

"It's not an ultimate solution," Sobotka said. "As a scientist, do I wish that there was a better plan and that it was being vitrified? Yes. Do I wish it was going to its final resting place? Yes. But the plague of trying to do everything perfect is paralysis."

Sierra Club suit

Cyrus Reed, a lobbyist for the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, would rather see Fluor Fernald's plans paralyzed. The chapter has appealed a decision earlier this year that paved the way for Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists to accept the waste, a move that resulted in a $7.5 million contract for the company.

A hearing for the appeal is scheduled for July 11 - well after the shipments are under way.

"They're jumping the gun," Reed said. "Waste is being moved before we've even had a hearing."

Meanwhile, Waste Control Specialists is hoping for another change in its license - one that would allow it to permanently dispose of the radioactive materials as well, said George Dials, the firm's president and chief operating officer.

As it stands, the waste can remain at the Andrews County site along the Texas-New Mexico border for only two years from the dates shipments arrive.

"We would have loved to go immediately to a disposal facility, but that option was not open," Wagner said. "At least you're getting the material off-site, which is certainly a step in the right direction in order to be able to finish the Fernald cleanup."

Drey vehemently disagrees. She suspects Fluor Fernald is acting quickly due to extra money it will receive depending on when the cleanup is done. The Department of Energy has a target date of Dec. 31, 2006. If Fluor Fernald completes the cleanup by March 2006, it will receive an "incentive fee" of $288 million on top of reimbursement for cleanup costs, according to Wagner. If it completes its work after December 2006, the incentive fee falls to $63 million.

Overall, including costs accrued since the 1989 plant closing, the Department of Energy is expected to spend $4.4 billion on the cleanup, Wagner said.

Whatever the reasons behind the shipments to begin this weekend, Drey would like to see them stalled until a better solution is developed.

"What's the rush if it's been there for 50 years?" Drey asked. "It could go back again, it really could, as crazy as it sounds. We have no idea."


Reporter Elizabethe Holland
E-mail: eholland@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8259


Note* Bottom photo credit: These containers, made of half-inch-thick carbon steel, will transport radioactive waste from Ohio to Texas. Photo from Fluor Fernald