During June, Department of Energy contractor North Wind Portage relocated 89,656 tons of uranium tailings and mill debris from the Moab, Utah site near the Colorado River to a disposal site about 30 miles away, according to a report to the Grand County, Utah Commission.
As a result, 13.6 million tons of the 16 million tons in the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project, or 85%, have now been moved to the engineered disposal site at Crescent Junction, according to a project update. The figures are part of a package put together for a quarterly meeting of the Moab Tailings Project Steering Committee on Tuesday.
The project continues to operate on a regular schedule of four trains per week, with trains carrying an average of 5,000 tons each. Should the contractor continue at that rate, it would eclipse the 14-million-ton mark by the end of 2023.
DOE told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2022 the bulk of cleanup of the Atlas Mineral Corp. uranium ore processing site near Moab should be nearly finished within four years.
Once all the tailings are moved, it would take a few more years to finish cleaning up the 480-acre former Atlas site, dispose of any contaminated equipment and close up the Crescent Junction disposal site, according to DOE’s strategic vision for the project. At some point after 2029 the Crescent Junction disposal site would be transferred to DOE’s Office of Legacy Management from the Office of Environmental Management.
The current North Wind Portage cleanup contract, valued at $613 million, started in February 2022 and is scheduled to run until Feb. 2, 2032.
