ML20137X458
| ML20137X458 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Wood River Junction |
| Issue date: | 11/20/1985 |
| From: | Helgeson K UNITED NUCLEAR CORP. (SUBS. OF UNC, INC.) |
| To: | Crow W NRC OFFICE OF NUCLEAR MATERIAL SAFETY & SAFEGUARDS (NMSS) |
| References | |
| 26097, NISRI:-85-024, NISRI:-85-24, NUDOCS 8512100526 | |
| Download: ML20137X458 (5) | |
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74-2 unc necovenvCwsrems RETURN IO. 396-5s g Division of United Nuclear Corporation One Narragansett Trail Telephone 401/364-7701 UnC A UOC RESOURCES Company Wood River Junction, Rhode Island 02894 NISRI: 85-024 November 20, 1985 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission 6
Office of Nuclear Materia RECEIVEQ'e Safety and Safeguards p.
Mr. W.
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.,, y Gentlemen, In response to your request for an abbreviated history of UNC's Recovery Systems facility in Rhode Island please find attached such a document.
I have attempted to cover the highlights of the facil-ity's operating lifespan.
If there are any questions about this document, please do not hesitate to contact the writer.
Very truly yours, UNC RECOVERY SYSTEMS 5
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HEL ON DocKUEQ Manager, Quality Assurance and-
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HISTORY UNC ROCOVERY SYSTEMS WOOD RIVER JCT., RHODE ISLAND UOE 1964 TO PRESENT The UNC Recovery Systems facility is located on a 1114 acre site, situated in southwestern Rhode Island in Washington County.
Ap-proximately 77 acres are located in the town of Richmond and the remaining acreage is located in the town of Charlestown.
The common boundary of these two towns is the Pawcatuck River, which flows through the northwest corner of UNC property.
The Recovery facility occupies approximately six (6) acres in the approximate center of the western half of the property and is about 1.3 miles (by road) southeast of the village of Wood River Junction.
Facility construction was started in May of 1963, and uranium re-covery operations began in March of 1964.
On July 24, 1964, an accidental criticality occured and the plant was shut down for a period of approximately six months.
During this period, the af-fected areas of the plant were decontaminated and rigorous im-provements in the plant's criticality safety program were insti-tuted.
The facility was designed to chemically recover uranium from un-irradiated scrap material containing varying enrichments of U-235.
The NRC also permitted us, by license, to process some slightly irradiated materials from critical assemblies or zero-power re-actors.
On one or two occassions, however, unknowingly, slight-ly irradiated scrap meeting the DOE definition of unirradiated was processed.
This material, again, came from critical assemblies or zero-power reactors.
During the recovery of uranium bearing scrap, small amounts of ra-dioactive material and stable chemicals were released to the en-vironment in the form of neutralized acidic raffinate, discharged to lined impoundments (lagoons).
Early on, we were allowed to discharge supernatant liquid from the impoundment designated la-goon A, directly to the Pawcatuck River, using the proper dilu-tion factors.
This practice was halted and Lagoon B was construct-ed and both lagoons were then used as settling basins.
The pre-cipitates were allowed to settle and be retained for burial at a later date and the supernatant liquids were allowed to evaporate.
During the 1973, early 1974 time frame, Lagoon B was allowed to dry and the precipitates and some of the underlying soil was dug up, drummed, and buried at an approved commercial burial site.
The lagoon was then relined and returned to service.
From 1974 to 1977, the Rhode Island Water Resources Board, with the cooperation of UNC, drilled a number of test wells on UNC property as part of a program to assess Rhode Island's potential water re-sources.
Above background levels of radioactivity and nitrate ion were found in some of the ground water under UNC property.
This
- HISTORY, UNC RECOVERY SYSTEMS, PAGE 2 8-material was found under approximately eleven (11) acres of the II property.
In immediate response to the situation, UNC installed an additional 10 observation wells to assess the situation.
It
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was subsequently found that the affected ground water extended in a plume from UNC's Process Lagoon area to the Pawcatuck River.
This contamination did not constitute a hazard because:
1)..
Radioactivity levels were generally within NRC limits for discharge to unrestricted areas.
2).
No drinking water wells were in the affected area and no drinking water wells in the areas surrounding UNC property were affected, and 3).
The aquifer appeared to discharging into the Pawcatuck River'at undetectable levels and with no measurable effects on river purity.
However, a remedial program was undertaken, including a compre-hensive monitoring program and excavation of the faulty lagoon and it's replacement with an improved settling basin system.
In 1980, UNC announced plans to terminate recovery operations and decommission the facility.
The combination of a decrease in the volume of scrap available for recovery, together with costly increases in government safeguards and other government regula-i tions, had made the operation no longer economically viable.
The decommissioning process was started in 1980 and was aimed at making'the facility suitable for unrestricted use.
It should be noted that the initial contamination levels were moderate and typical of any facility similarly processing nuclear material.
An extensive survey was instituted to characterize the facility and the surrounding areas.
Based on the results of the survey, a decommissioning plan was formulated and after NRC approval, work was started.
The largest portion of the cleanup consisted of digging up, processing for burial, and shipping to burial all of the lagoon sludge and contaminated soil beneath the lagoons.
Other contaminated soil areas were also dug up, drummed, and ship-ped to burial, along with the plant sanitary sewer system.
To achieve compliance with decontamination limits established by the NRC, the buildings and grounds were decontaminated by equip-ment removal, paint removal, sandblasting, concrete removal, and in some instances, the complete removal of concrete floor and wall areas, including the removal of soil underlying the affected areas.
Following the general decontamination, a complete survey was per-3 formed on all areas, to assure compliance with the criteria es-tablished by the NRC for release for unrestricted use.
A few areas required additional decontamination and after this was accomplished, the areas were resurveyed.
Finally, a Decommissioning Survey Report was completed and submitted to the U. S. NRC.
Altogether, some 250,000 cubic feet of low-level waste (most of it was so low-level that it met DOT criteria as non-radioactive) was buried at commer-cial or DOE low-level waste burial sites.
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IIISTORY, UNC RECOVERY SYSTEMS, PAGE 3 a
8 In 1981, following the earlier ground water contamination findings, Unc the U.S. Geological Survey, a branch of the Department of the In-terior, initiated an extensive three year study of the ground wa-ter at the UNC site.
This included the installation of more than 135 test and observation wells plus the performance of many scien-tific test designed to allow the development of a computer model for use in predicting and describing the movement of radionuclides in ground water.
Early in 1984, a preliminary report was published.
The findings in the report showed that the contamination was, a) con-fined to a relatively small portion of UNC's property, and b) it is flowing into the Pawcatuck River, where it is so diluted as to be undetectable in river water.
The systematic data from 1982 to Jan-uary 1984 shows that, since removal of the Process Lagoon System, the aquifer has been purging itself naterally, and that geven the flow rate of the aquifer, the ground water should return to background levels in three to five years.
It is also understood from the re-port issued by Dr.
D.L. Waner, an NRC contract hydrogeologist, in August 1984, that he would not recommend any palliative actions but would recommend allowing the aquifer to purge itself naturally.
In addition to UNC's Decommissioning Survey, the NRC contracted an independer.t firm (Oak Ridge Associated Universities) to perform a verification survey of the entire site to assure the validity of UNC's survey results and to determine is additional decontamination would need to be performed in any area.
After completion of this survey, in 1983, this firm was in the process of submitting a Final Survey Report.
The NRC will then perform it's assessment, consid-ering both documents, and issue a finding, most likely in the form of an environmental impact statement.
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