The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management plans closer oversight of the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project after workers at the Utah site knowingly falsified certain records.
Contractor North Wind Group has taken disciplinary action against the employees involved, a DOE spokesperson said in a Wednesday email, adding that more business ethics training has been scheduled for staff. “Additionally, DOE will perform enhanced oversight of quality assurance-related activities and records.”
The spokesperson did not indicate if anyone had been fired over the record falsification at the cleanup project near Moab, Utah. The matter was disclosed in a DOE operating experience report dated April 19.
Idaho-based North Wind, through its January 2017 acquisition of Portage, is the cleanup contractor through 2021 at UMTRA. In April 2016, Portage got a five-year, $153.8 million follow-on task order to its initial five-year contract.
As Moab’s prime contractor, North Wind is responsible for excavating and hauling about 16 million tons of uranium mill tailings from a former uranium ore processing site to a disposal cell 32 miles away in Crescent Junction, Utah.
In March, a North Wind quality manager identified several inaccuracies and inconsistencies in equipment qualification records for operations at Crescent Junction. The quality manager initially identified some missing records for operators and, after receiving them on March 19, noticed inconsistencies in dates in the paperwork, according to the DOE operating report.
The quality manager reported the discrepancies to the contractor’s project manager on April 3. The project manager called for an internal investigation into the records, which occurred on April 9-10, according to the DOE operations report.
The investigation concluded the operations manager at Crescent Junction and a roving crew manager willingly told others to falsify qualification records for six equipment operators.
The unspecified disciplinary action was commenced against those involved in the falsification on April 11, and the records in question were voided.
“Safety and the quality of work processes, including records management, are paramount on the Moab UMTRA Project. In the course of routine record monitoring and surveillance, the contractor was able to self-identify” the records falsification, the DOE spokesperson said.
Moab UMTRA Shows Progress on Tailings
The Energy Department has removed about 57 percent of the tailings from the former uranium concentrate production mill 3 miles northwest of Moab, according to the latest available figures.
At the end of March, Moab UMTRA had moved about 9.06 million tons of the estimated 16 million tons to be shipped away from the Colorado River, according to Grand County, Utah, UMTRA Liaison Lee Shenton.
Moab UMTRA has on average shipped more than 39,000 tons per month for the last half-year, Shenton said by email: “At this rate the last of the tailings would be shipped in late-2032 but some additional time will be required to complete other aspects of the project so I’m saying they’ll finish around 2034.”
The tailings are taken by train to the disposal cell near Crescent Junction. There are two shipments per week in lidded containers.
The 130-acre tailings pile, which sits on a larger 400-acre tract, was the location of an Atlas Minerals Corp. uranium-ore processing facility, which operated from the 1950s until the 1980s.
The UMTRA project’s goals include moving the uranium tailings away from Colorado River and using defensive wells to protect the river from contaminants.
