Thursday, July 15, 1999
Fernald cleanup leaders want public involvement
BY RACHEL MELCER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
CROSBY TOWNSHIP — Officials are treading lightly as they make a second attempt at cleaning the highly dangerous waste sitting in two crumbling silos at the former Fernald uranium processing plant.
They don't want to repeat past mistakes.
Site manager Fluor Daniel Fernald and the Department of Energy (DOE) are including community residents and activists in making decisions — a point made clear at a public briefing Tuesday night.
“This is the most key component of this project ... and we're going to go overboard to get your comments,” said Dave Yockman, DOE silos project manager. And if people have questions about the process, “we're going to be available.”
The agencies want to avoid the lack of communication and sometimes unilateral decisions that marred a 1996 attempt to treat the silos waste. That project ran over budget and behind schedule. It finally ended in the waste leaking, which led to sanctions and hard feelings among residents because they had virtually no say in how the potentially dangerous materials were being handled.
“DOE has learned a hard lesson about including the public every step of the way,” said Lisa Crawford, head of Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health. “Now this is our opportunity to ask the hard questions up front.”
DOE scientists presented data from tests of four types of technolo gies that could be used to treat the radioactive and hazardous chemical waste in the “K-65'' silos: two forms of vitrification, which would encase the dangerous elements in glasslike pellets; and two ways to combine the material with cement to form stable bricks suitable for cross-country shipping.
The information will be analyzed and subject to public comment over the next few months. DOE must present its chosen method to the Environmental Protection Agency for approval by Feb. 1, or face penalties for missing the deadline.
Although no decisions have been made, many think that the best choice would be to vitrify the waste — in spite of the previous vitrification failure.
The technology would allow more of the waste to be treated in a shorter amount of time, and the end product would be much smaller and lighter than cement bricks. That would keep down the cost of shipping the material to the Nevada Test Site for permanent disposal.
“I think any one of these (technologies) would work,” said Gail Bingham, a member of the Critical Analysis Team that is taking an independent look at analysis and decisions made by Fluor Daniel and DOE.
The waste, which has been sitting in the failing silos since the 1950s, will be removed between 2000 and 2003 and transferred to more secure temporary holding tanks. Treatment and off-site shipping, which will begin in 2003 or 2004, is expected to be complete in 2008.
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