By John Stang
EnergySolutions is seeking an exemption to Utah state regulations so the Salt Lake City-based nuclear services company can dispose of depleted uranium from disassembled bullets at its Clive waste facility.
The Utah Waste Management and Radiation Control Board is scheduled to be briefed on the request Thursday. Meanwhile, a 30-day public comment period on the application began Aug. 30.
The state has many questions about accepting the material and does not expect the issue to be resolved until next spring, according to Scott Anderson, director of the Utah Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control. The questions focus on the radiological differences between the solid depleted uranium tips from the bullets and the powdered uranium oxide that EnergySolutions stores at its disposal facility 75 miles from Salt Lake City.
The Waste Management and Radiation Control Board will make the final decision on the request.
EnergySolutions operates two of the four U.S. facilities licensed for disposal of low-level radioactive waste, at Clive and Barnwell, S.C. All four facilities are in Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreement states, which assume regulatory authority over certain uses of radioactive materials.
The Clive site already stores depleted uranium oxide powder in casks in below-grade cells, which is a separate issue from the depleted uranium bullets. The facility has accepted 26,500 cubic yards of uranium dioxide powder from U.S. Department of Energy sites. But in 2010, then-Gov. Jon Huntsman stopped those shipments to review the situation given the federal government had 750,000 tons of this material stockpiled to send to Clive. That review is ongoing.
Unlike the uranium dioxide powder, the 30-millimeter bullets are heavy solids — 1.6 times denser than lead — designed to penetrate armor on the battlefield. And the bullets have different radiological characteristics, including uranium decay that creates “daughter” radioactive materials that are more radioactive than the original uranium.
“That is why there will be lots of evaluations with the bullets,” Anderson said.
EnergySolutions made the request in an Aug. 24 letter to the state. The company did not respond late this week to a request for additional information.
The U.S. Army plans to remove the depleted uranium from the special bullets at its facilities at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah and the Crane Army Ammunition Activity site in Indiana. It intends to disassemble 3.5 million to 7 million of these bullets annually for four years, which translates to 667 cubic yards of Class A low-level radioactive waste per year, according to the Aug. 24 letter. That is a total of 2,668 cubic yards of bullets in a site capable of holding 8.7 million cubic yards — or 0.4 percent of the Clive facility’s capacity, said the letter from Vern Rogers, EnergySolutions’ manager for compliance and permitting, to Anderson.
“Solid metal depleted uranium penetrators are less hazardous and less plentiful than the depleted uranium oxides,” Rogers wrote. “Depleted uranium metal does not generate dust and emits radon gas at rates significantly lower than depleted uranium oxide. Therefore, the risk to human health and the environment is much less for depleted uranium metal than for depleted uranium oxide. Due to these differences, depleted uranium metal need not be managed under the same restrictions as depleted uranium oxide.”
The request has generated opposition. “It could open the floodgates for other forms of (depleted uranium),” Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah spokeswoman Grace Olscamp told the Salt Lake Tribune. “We see this as an excuse to rush the process. There’s no way to guarantee that it can be safely stored and no guarantee that the responsibility to store it will fall back on the state.”
