The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday it has scheduled a meeting to address apparent violations of federal low-level radioactive waste transportation regulations by U.S. uranium producer Cameco Resources.
The regulator said in an April 3 letter to Cameco that it is considering “escalated enforcement action” after identifying nine seeming breaches of NRC and U.S. Transportation Department rules following an on-site inspection from Nov. 15 to 17, 2016, of the company’s uranium mine in Converse County, Wyo.
The letter does not specify the form that action could take, but says the agency might not impose a fine given Cameco Resource’s corrective actions and the fact that it has not faced escalated enforcement measures over the last two years. “The final decision will be based on you confirming on the license docket that the corrective actions previously described to the NRC staff have been, or are being taken,” Mark Shaffer, director of the NRC Division of Nuclear Materials Safety, wrote to Cameco Resources President Brent Berg.
The possible violations, Shaffer stated, include: failure to accurately evaluate and report the radiation activity of pond sediment and barium sulfate sludge waste being shipped to Energy Fuel Resources’ White Mesa Uranium Mill site in Utah for disposal; failure to accurately label that waste; failure to designate and transport the waste as Low Specific Activity level two (LSA-II) material; and failure to use appropriate containers to transport that material.
These could be Severity Level III or IV violations, on the lower end of the significance spectrum, an NRC spokesman said by email.
The probe addressed separate transportation incidents on Aug. 20, 2015, and March 28, 2016. In both events, waste transport packages were found to be leaking upon arrival at the disposal facility; contamination levels each time were below Transportation Department limits for an exclusive use shipment. Surveys of the route taken in the later shipment – which carried 13 cubic yards of sludge — did not find any contamination outside the on-site roadway, the NRC said.
The sludge being shipped to Utah contained small amounts of barium and radium extracted during wastewater treatment at the Wyoming mine, according to Cameco Resources spokesman Gord Struthers. The company generally makes about two shipments per year, he said by email Tuesday.
“While no harm to people or the environment resulted, our performance in this matter does not meet our own expectations. We accept the validity of all of the apparent violations and have completed comprehensive corrective actions to address them,” Struthers wrote.
After the second incident, Cameco Resources halted sludge transport while it prepared evaluations of inadequate packaging and transportation of waste and radioactivity concentrations in waste material, along with establishing a corrective action plan and timeline. The company has also strengthened its preparation and documentation of waste shipments, upgraded measuring of gamma-emitting radionuclides in sludge samples, and provided staff training from an outside expert on transportation, among other measures.
Management plans to complete all corrective actions ahead of the next NRC inspection, which is expected in May, Struthers said.
The NRC-Cameco Resources meeting is scheduled for 8 a.m. local time at the agency’s Region IV office at 1600 E. Lamar Blvd. in Arlington, Texas. The public can access the meeting by calling 888-469-0565 and using the passcode 4465769. There will be no finding regarding the safety significance of the investigation or any NRC action at the session, according to a press statement.
Cameco Resources is the U.S. subsidiary of Canada-based uranium producer Cameco Corp.
