The interested public has until the end of the week to submit its comments on a proposed cleanup plan for a former New Mexico uranium mine currently under Nuclear Regulatory Commission jurisdiction.
Sunday is the deadline for public input on a proposed license amendment for the United Nuclear Corporation’s (UNC) Church Rock site, according to a June Federal Register notice from NRC. The June notice extended the deadline to Oct. 31 from May 27.
The commission is weighing whether to allow a General Electric-led decommissioning team to move radioactive material from the northwestern New Mexico uranium mine to a nearby mill tailings disposal site. That project is part of a larger cleanup effort at Church Rock stemming from a 1979 dam breach that dumped 94 million gallons of radioactive slurry into the nearby Puerco River.
The proposed license amendment has received a number of public comments, including one from Navajo Nation president Jonathan Nez. In an April letter to NRC, Nez expressed concern that radioactive waste from the Church Rock mine wasn’t being moved far enough away from local Navajo communities, the closest of which is only about a tenth of a mile from the tailings disposal site.
Meanwhile, the Church Rock cleanup crew is meeting NRC’s standards so far, the agency found in a Sep. 16 inspection. The team is doing its work “in accordance with license and regulatory requirements,” the report said, and radioactive mill tailings from the site are being safely stored.
