Friday, January 08, 1999
Firm to clean Fernald silo containing radioactive waste
BY RACHEL MELCER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
CROSBY TOWNSHIP — Community activists say they are happy that, finally, a contractor has been hired to empty and clean one of three silos full of radioactive waste at the former Fernald uranium processing plant.
Site manager Fluor Daniel Fernald announced this week that it will pay Golden, Colo.-based Rocky Mountain Reme diation Services LLC more than $16 million over the next five years.
The company will remove about 5,100 cubic yards of powdered metal oxides from the silo, mix it with concrete and shape it into bricks for shipping to a permanent dump site.
Activists, who have monitored the Fernald cleanup through years of squabbling over technology and missteps, say the squat, round silos rep resent their biggest challenge.
The silo 3 contract award “is another step in the right direction,” said Lisa Crawford, president of Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH). “We want to keep going forward, not back anymore.”
Now that this part of the overall silos cleanup is under way, Ms. Crawford said she is anxious for progress on the removal of silos 1 and 2.
Those structures, known as the “K-65” silos, contain much more dangerous waste in a semi-liquid form that is more difficult to handle and remove than that in silo 3.
After a failed 1996 attempt to vitrify the silos 1 and 2 waste — encasing it in glass capsules that could be safely handled — Fluor Daniel and the Department of Energy went back to the drawing board. They are now investigating new technologies for dealing with the muck and hope to select a plan this year.
The silos were filled with waste and uranium processing byproducts in the 1950s, before government operators switched to disposal pits.
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