The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a plan to dispose of radioactive waste from the site of a 1979 mine spill in New Mexico, the agency announced Thursday.
NRC Wednesday greenlit a license amendment for the shuttered United Nuclear Corporation Church Rock site, allowing a General Electric-led cleanup crew to transfer nearly a million tons of the McKinley County, N.M., mine’s radioactive waste to a nearby mill tailings disposal site.
The license amendment is part of larger cleanup efforts at the Church Rock site, which in 1979 was the epicenter of one of the largest radiological releases in U.S. history when a dam breach in a containment pool caused nearly 94 million gallons of radioactive slurry to flow into the nearby Puerco River.
NRC’s license amendment comes amid protests from the Navajo Nation, which shares a border with the Church Rock site.
The agency said in January that any adverse environmental impacts from moving mine waste to the mill tailings site would “not preclude” issuing such an amendment, though it acknowledged that the proposed action could have “major impacts on the social, spiritual, and cultural well-being of some Navajo people.”
NRC said in a January environmental impact statement for the license amendment that the General Electric decommissioning crew could finish shipping the waste away from the Church Rock mine within four years or so.
