Mike LaFranzo of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the Westinghouse Hematite Decommissioning Project (HDP) is nearing completion, with cleanup finished at the former nuclear fuels plant and just some paperwork left to do.
“All the burial pits and places of excavation are back-filled,” LaFranzo, NRC senior health physicist, said Nov. 9.
While the physical cleanup is finished, Westinghouse still has people working at the site along Hwy. P and north of Hematite, LaFranzo said.
In June 2016, Westinghouse reported that its workforce had shrunk from 75 to 10 employees.
Westinghouse has owned the plant since 1999 and began decommissioning activities in 2002. The company spent $146 million on the cleanup through June 2016, the last time Westinghouse held a public meeting on the project.
Westinghouse officials did not return calls for comment by Leader deadline.
After the NRC determines the entire decommissioning project is complete, Westinghouse must monitor water near the plant for another two decades. The site covers 228 acres, but only 28 acres of the site were targeted for cleanup because it was the only area affected by the plant’s activities.
LaFranzo said the NRC will review Westinghouse’s site cleanup paperwork and that review will not be finished quickly.
“The licensee is submitting information to the NRC stating that the site is clear,” he said. “The NRC is reviewing the information. It’s going to take a while because the information is voluminous.” LaFranzo said the NRC takes nothing for granted in its review process.
“Our reviews are independent,” he said.
At a June 28, 2016, public meeting and facility tour, then-Westinghouse vice president of operations support and HDP managing director Joe Smetanka said the site did not pose a threat to those who lived near it.
“We’ve finished the physical remediation on the radiation in the soil,” Smetanka said at the time. “As of today, there is nothing here that could cause harm to the public.”
The Hematite facility was the oldest nuclear fuel manufacturing plant in the United States. It opened in 1956 to manufacture nuclear fuel for the government and military.
In 1974, operation switched to producing commercial nuclear fuel for power plants. Manufacturing at the plant stopped in 2001 after it was purchased by Westinghouse.
The Hematite plant was part of a multibillion-dollar package deal.
Radioactive and chemically contaminated materials and trash had been buried in pits at the site from 1965 to 1970, Westinghouse discovered.
Company officials told those assembled at the June 2016 meeting that the task of excavating and hauling away 375,522,244 pounds of contaminated soil ended the week of the tour.
Westinghouse officials say about 362 million pounds of contaminated soil found to contain low-level radiological, chemical and building waste has been
transported by rail to U.S. Ecology Inc. in Grandview, Idaho. Another approximately 14 million pounds of soil was found to contain higher-level radiological waste and was hauled away to other sites around the country.
When the project began in 2002, Westinghouse officials said they hoped
to complete it in four or five years.