BY RACHEL MELCER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Nearly 18 months after a treatment facility meltdown stymied their attempts to clean up the most-hazardous waste at the former Fernald uranium processing plant, Fluor Daniel Fernald officials on Monday handed off the project to someone else.
Four different companies, to be exact.
At a combined price of $4.2 million, their scientists will spend the next 48 weeks testing new technologies designed to stabilize 6,800 cubic meters of lead-contaminated, radioactive muck now in two crumbling silos at the Fernald facility in northwest Hamilton County.
Contracts were awarded Monday to Toledo-based EnVitco, for $2 million; Collegeville, Pa.-based Vortec Corp., $1.34 million; Monroeville, Pa.-based Industrial Technologies Corp., $305,000; and Columbia, S.C.-based Chem-Nuclear, $576,000.
But, because of concerns about radioactive contamination, they will not be using the actual Fernald waste.
Instead, they will use a variety of surrogate compounds formulated by scientists at Fluor Daniel Fernald, the cleanup site manager. The materials will contain the same proportions of water, arsenic, lead and other toxins -- without any of the radon gas-emitting radium and uranium.
That's because in this case, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are concerned with only one thing: getting the lead out.
Officials already know that the material will eventually wind up in permanent storage at the government-run Nevada Test Site -- where handling the nuclear byproducts of the Cold War is standard operating procedure. But the Nevada Test Site will not accept any liquid or chemically hazardous material, according to Dennis Nixon, silos project manager for Fluor Daniel Fernald.
"The challenge for (treating and shipping) this waste stream is not the radioactive element, it's the hazardous element -- the lead that has the potential to leach out into the environment," he said.
The solution, scientists say, is to change the chemical makeup of the waste. Moisture will be removed, and the lead will be chemically bonded to either glass or concrete.
Fluor Daniel Fernald tried vitrification -- turning the material into a glasslike solid -- in 1996, but failed when a pilot plant melted and spewed thousands of pounds of waste into an emergency catch basin and onto the floor.
The silo cleanup project was put on hold as officials went back to the drawing board.
Now they are paying outside contractors to test variations of the two different technologies. The one that works will be applied to the Fernald silo waste in an estimated $275 million, eight-year cleanup.
Under EPA-imposed deadlines, the Department of Energy must select a specific technology, open it up to public comment and offer the project up for bids by the end of 2000.
Lisa Crawford, president of Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health, said the hopes of an entire community are riding on the process.
"Silos 1 and 2 are the worst things we have on site, the scariest, the most dangerous . . . and I want it in the safest configuration we can put it in, especially since we're going to transport it," she said.
Fernald-area residents can't wait to get the contaminated waste off-site. It is stored in silos that experts say could be swept away by a tornado. And clay liners designed to prevent cancer-causing radon gas from leaking into the atmosphere are beginning to decay. But, Ms. Crawford says, it's more important to handle the project right than to just do it fast.
"When the melter melted over there, it was hard on all of us because we had really hung our hats on vitrification and it didn't work," she said. "I think this time, we need to make sure we're doing it right. And if it's going to cause delays, so be it."
Despite their earlier gaffe, Fluor Daniel Fernald officials are not ready to give up on vitrification.
The problem with their first attempt, according to Mr. Nixon, was that lead unexpectedly separated from the molten glass mixture and collected at the bottom of a mixing pool -- and then burned through the vitrification machine.
"It's a matter of learning lessons. It was an unfortunate setback for vitrification," said Mr. Nixon, who still believes the process can work.
EnVitco and Vortec Corp will try their hand at refining vitrification. The other option, being explored by Industrial Technologies Corp. and Chem-Nuclear, is chemical stabilization: The silo material will be mixed with concrete and then molded into solid blocks suitable for shipment.
But that yields large, heavy chunks of material that are much more expensive to transport and store. And the process is completed in batches, rather than as a 24-hour operation possible with vitrification. That's why Fluor Daniel Fernald officials initially ruled it out, Mr. Nixon said. They had thought that vitrification would be cheaper -- until they realized how difficult and costly it might be to refine that more complicated technology.
"It was thought at that time that vitrification (yielded) a much better waste form," Mr. Nixon said. "But all things equal, both technologies could do this job."
The proof will come in the subcontractors' reports.
"We are eager to learn the results," said Nina Akgunduz, Department of Energy silos project manager. "This project has been extremely challenging, and we are pleased to start heading down the path that will lead to a final solution."
