The Department of Energy is accepting claims through Sept. 13 for reimbursement of expenses for cleanup of certain uranium and thorium processing sites in the current 2019 federal fiscal year.
The agency said in a Federal Register notice Tuesday that its Office of Environmental Management requested just over $21 million in fiscal 2020 for the program under Title X of the 1992 Energy Policy Act. That’s up from the $11 million enacted for the current fiscal year.
Under the law, the Energy Department is directed to reimburse spending on decontamination, decommissioning, reclamation, and other cleanup activities by uranium and thorium processing site licensees. “The eligible licensees incurred these costs to remediate byproduct material, generated as an incident of sales to the United States Government of uranium or thorium that was extracted or concentrated from ores processed primarily for their source material contents,” the Federal Register notice says.
Between 1942 and 1970, the U.S. Army Manhattan Engineer District and the Atomic Energy Commission entered into several contracts with commercial mills to buy uranium concentrate to support nuclear defense programs, a DOE spokesperson said in a Thursday email.
Costs must comply with U.S. law under the 1978 Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act (UMTRCA) and will be paid from the federal Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund. The 14 sites were licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or one of its certified agreement state programs.
None of the 14 Title X sites are still operational, and all have either completed remediation or are in the final stages of the work, according to the DOE spokesperson. The Energy Department is conducting long-term surveillance and maintenance under UMTRCA. The budget request does not list a schedule for completion.
Payments between fiscal 1994 and fiscal 2014 amounted to about $752 million for uranium and thorium reprocessing remediation, with more than half ($397 million) for thorium.
Total maximum remaining liability for uranium and thorium amounts to about $102 million, according to the DOE budget request for fiscal 2020.
Claims should be submitted to DOE’s Office of Legacy Management, Attn.: Jalena Dayvault, Lead for Review of Title X Reimbursement of Claims, 2597 Legacy Way, Grand Junction, CO 81503. Each filing should include two copies of the claim.
