The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will not impose fines against U.S. uranium producer Cameco Resources for nine violations of federal regulations identified in the agency’s November 2016 inspection of the company’s radioactive waste transportation program.
NRC Deputy Region IV Administrator Scott Morris said in a June 29 letter to Cameco Resources President Brent Berg that he was authorized not to propose a civil penalty. A fine of $35,000 is the base considered for a Severity Level III violation, Morris said in the letter. Five of the nine violations cited against the company were Level III. The other four were the lesser Level IV violations.
“Because your facility has not been the subject of escalated enforcement action within the last two inspections, the NRC considered whether credit was warranted for Corrective Action,” the NRC official said in the letter, which was attached to a notice of violation. While Morris said he had received authority form the director of the NRC’s Office of Enforcement to forgo a fine, “significant violations in the future could result in a civil penalty.”
Additionally, NRC inspectors have been observing company staff’s progress in developing and implementing corrective actions laid out in an October 2016 letter from Cameco.
The inspection was triggered by a leaking intermodal container of barium sulfate sludge that was shipped in March 2016 from Cameco’s uranium mine in Converse County, Wyo., for storage at Energy Fuel Resources’ White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah in March 2016.
The Level III violations resulted from the same root cause – failure to ensure that an analytical laboratory used the right method to detect and quantify radium-226 in sludge samples ahead of shipment. “This resulted in the incorrect classification and use of inappropriate shipping containers for the pond settlement and barium sulfate sludge waste,” according to the NRC letter
