CROSBY TOWNSHIP -- Ever since a radioactive waste shipment from Fernald to Nevada leaked onto a Kingman, Ariz., roadway seven months ago, officials at the former uranium processing plant have been dotting their i's and crossing their fingers.
Now a team of inspectors from the Nevada Test Site, repository of the nation's radioactive waste, is at the Fernald plant to determine whether it can resume shipments that were abruptly halted after the Dec. 15 accident.
"We want to actually verify that they are doing the right thing," said Mike Noland, assistant radioactive waste acceptance project manager for Bechtel Nevada, which oversees the Nevada Test Site. The leak, which Department of Energy officials say did not endanger public health or the environment, was caused by a faulty "white metal box" that had been the cornerstone of the shipping program. The 4-by-4-by-7-foot containers were loaded onto trucks at Fernald, about 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, and hauled on interstates and federal roads across the country.
Activists from Crosby Township to Nevada were incensed to learn that radioactive waste could leak in their communities.
So the federal DOE began an intensive review process, beginning with an internal report and winding down with this week's inspection by Nevada personnel. The team is expected to release its findings to the DOE in about one month and then, if the report is favorable, final Energy Deparment approval should come "fairly quickly," DOE spokesman Gary Stegner said.
That will be good news at Fernald, where about 1,400 white metal boxes -- each stamped "FOR ON SITE STORAGE ONLY - NOT TO BE USED FOR SHIPPING" -- are beginning to get in the way.
"Obviously, this has caused something of a backlog," said John Sattler, DOE waste management team leader. "We really are looking at needing to get started (shipping) by next year."
Engineers are designing new containers to handle the waste and a manufacturing contract may be awarded this fall, said Don Paine, Fluor Daniel Fernald vice president of waste management. Officials gave this account of the December accident:
Material that appeared to both the naked eye and X-rays to be dry was loaded into white metal containers, which had stood up to cross-country shipments virtually without incident since 1986. But the bumps and jolts of transit caused the material to separate. Liquid then leaked through a stress fracture that developed in the box. The truck driver found the leak during a routine roadside safety check.
The DOE accident investigation revealed that personnel at both sites were not careful enough in their oversight of the low-level radioactive waste because it does not pose a severe, immediate safety threat. And Fernald scientists should have known that liquid could leak out of the material during shipment, the report said. To correct the problems, communication between Nevada and Fernald, which ships more radioactive waste to Nevada than any other site in the country, has been improved. Nevada Test Site officials are reexamining their standards to apply the lessons learned to other DOE sites nationwide. And Fernald scientists are prepared to put any material containing more than 35 percent moisture through a drying process before shipment.
