Thursday, March 11, 1999
Technology makes cleanup of Fernald 'can't-miss' project
BY LEW MOORES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
CROSBY TOWNSHIP — It will be another year before work actually gets started to move sludge wastes from two deteriorating silos at the Fernald site, but the contractor is confident the project will be successful.
Foster Wheeler Environmental Corp., based in Livingston, N.J., has been hired by Fluor Daniel Fernald to reduce the radon gas in the silos, and to transfer the potentially deadly, radium-bearing wastes into four steel tanks that will be constructed at Fernald.
“There's a level of difficulty associated with it, but based on the technology and experience, it's a can't-miss scenario,” said Ed Nelson, project manager for Foster Wheeler. His company was awarded a $50 million contract.
The company has done environmental cleanup around the country, including decontaminating and de commissioning, and “solving the problems of disposal and remediation,” Mr. Nelson said.
The company has worked on a Superfund project in New Jersey that involved waste retrieval, sludge and debris handling, waste-water treatment and disposal.
The waste retrieval work at Fernald is expected to take until 2003. Foster Wheeler is not handling the work involved in the final cleanup and disposal of the sludge wastes. The contract for that work still has to be awarded, said Kathy Graham, a spokeswoman for Fluor Daniel, which is doing the cleanup for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Foster Wheeler's task is to reduce the radon gas in the silos and provide safer storage for the sludge wastes until they are permanently disposed of.
This work will involve pumping out the 8,900 cubic yards of low-level uranium ore residues from the two silos at Fernald and into four 750,000-gallon steel tanks that will be built at the site.
Before that process, Foster Wheeler also will build a system to control the radon gas in the silo head space before any work begins on the silos themselves.
But the company will first spend the next 10 to 11 months working out a specific plan to submit to Fluor Daniel before actually mobilizing at the site.
And even then, Mr. Nelson said, Foster Wheeler will first practice the transfer process on an empty silo at Fernald, which will be used as a mock-up and training exercise.
“We will outfit it with surrogate materials and go through the entire process there,” he said. “We will pump it out and deposit it into the steel transfer tank area, just as we will do with the real thing. We will then pump it out and back again. So everyone will be experienced in doing exactly what is required before we ever move over to the silos with the equipment.”
The silos were built in the 1950s to contain radioactive waste that was a byproduct of processing uranium for nuclear weapons. The work began in 1951 and was halted in 1989.
The silos were not meant to be long-term storage tanks for the waste, and have eroded over the years.
Radon gas leaking from the silos causes the most significant health risk to residents who live nearby, studies have shown.
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