ML20202B248
| ML20202B248 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 04/02/1997 |
| From: | Blough A NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION I) |
| To: | Greeves J NRC OFFICE OF NUCLEAR MATERIAL SAFETY & SAFEGUARDS (NMSS) |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20202B231 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-98-296 NUDOCS 9901290038 | |
| Download: ML20202B248 (5) | |
Text
....
l g Uh g*4 UNITED STATES d
8 8
g NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION j
REGloN I 475 ALLENDALE ROAD o,
g KING oF PRusslA, PENNSYLVANIA 19406-1415 g *****,e April 2, 1997 MEMORANDUM TO:
John T. Greeves, Director Division of Waste Management, NMSS FROM:
A. Randolph Blough, Director Division of Nuclear Materials Safety
SUBJECT:
LETTER FROM NEW YORK REQUESTING NRC's POSITION ON REMEDIATED FUSRAP SITES l
The enclosed March 12,1997 letter from Paul J. Merges, Chief, Bureau of Pesticides and Radiation, New York State Department Of Environmental Conservation (DEC), to Craig Gordon, Regional State Agreements Officer, identifies questions about remediation of Tonawanda, New York, sites contaminated with 11e.(2) byproduct material under the U.S.
Department of Energy's Formerly Used Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP).
The letter raises similar concerns to those identified in the DEC's February 29,1996 letter from Dr. Merges to Mr. Gordon, relative to NRC jurisdiction over 11e.(2) material after sites are remediated under FUSRAP. By letter dated April 23,1996 we provided the State an interim response indicating the practice of not licensing materials at FUSRAP sites. We understand that a Commission paper addressing the issues in question is under development by your staff. As the responsible program office, we request your evaluation of the questions raised by the State and an update on the status of the NRC position as it relates to jurisdiction over 11e.(2) materials following FUSRAP site remediation.
The State notes their attention is being directed to criteria to be used in final site remediation and requires prompt resolution to the questions identified in their letter. So that we can advise the DEC appropriately, please respond to the issues at the earliest possible date.
Should you need to discuss this matter, contact Craig Gordon at (610) 337-5216 or Frank Costello at (610) 337-5283 of my staff.
Enclosure:
As stated cc w/ encl:
R. Bangart, OSP P. Lohaus, OSP J. Hickey, NMSS l
l l
9901290038 990106 i
, e... g< (
v g,
i
! S.
3 F.A.C.T.S.
(For A Clean Tonawanda Site)
" PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER" Box 566 Phone: (716) 876-9552 l
Kenmore, NY 14217-0566 Fax:
(716)876-9552 l
COMMENTS ON " ENGINEERING EVALUATION / COST ANALYSIS (EE/CA) FOR PRAXAIR INTERIM ACTIONS, JANUARY 1996" James M. Rauch March 12, 1996 a)
Since last October the Department of Energy (DOE) has been conducting an " interim" action at the Linde/Praxair property of the Tonawanda Site.
This " interim" action consists of an expensive, labor-intensive, partial decontamination of Buildings 31, 14, and 30, in spite of the community's overwhelming preference for EIS Alternative 2 which calls for the less costly demolition and offsite disposal of all four buildings (three of which were built by the Manhattan Project at taxpayer expense) including an estimated 5,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil under the buildings.
DOE claims this action qualifies for a NEPA Categorical Exclusion from public environmental review.
We disagree and have objected to this costly building decontamination action for two reasons:
- 1) DOE has maintained that "too-high" cost is the primary obstacle to implementing EIS Alternative 2.
Yet, DOE claims that this more costly
" interim" decontamination action will not prejudice the selection of a sitewide " final remediation" plan.
These two statements are clearly incompatible.
On October 23, 1995 at Congressman LaFa3ce's Niagara Falls office, DOE Assistant Secretary Thomas Grumbly made a commitment to us to disclose the extra cost of building decontamination over the cost of demolition.
Are we to conclude that lack of money will He has failed to do so.
not be a factor in the selection of a sitewide " final remediation" plan?
- 2) The buildings are being cleaned to meet the DOE's basic radiation dose guideline of 100 millirems per year above background assuming the current limited-use exposure scenario--industrial use.
We This dose level corresponds to a 33% increase in fatal cancers.
do not believe this is sufficiently protective of workers' health.
It also does not seem to meet the surface decontamination require-ments for release of facilities specified in the NYS Department of j
Health regulation NYCRR Part 16, Appendix A, Table 7.
A u
[' N u
T l
b)
Now the DOE has issued (on January 29, 1996) e draft y
for Praxair Interim l
" Engineering Evaluation / Cost Analysis (EE/CA)
Actions" covering only: 1) the demolition of Building 38, and 2) removal of the radioactive debris and soils that exceed DOE's from the onsite soil pile.
At the request of cleanup criteria FACTS and CANiT, the comment period has been extended to March 15, l
1996, a 45 day period as previously prescribed.
While the
" suspended" EIS documents (Remedial Ir vestigation [RI), Baseline (BRAJ, Feasibility Study [FS) and Proposed Plan Risk Assessment
[PP)) are mentioned, DOE apparently believes the twenty page EE/CA itself to be a sufficient environmental impact review for this
" interim" removal action.
We disagree and we object to this proposal for the following reasons:
- 1) On page 9, DOE claims "It is reasonable to expect any site-wide remedy to include controls (restrictions on access to the
- site, deed limitat. ions on residential
- use, etc.]
to prevent We do not exposures resulting from future activities at the site."
know where DOE got this idea; certainly not at any public meetings.
Both the community and the private property owners expect a thorough cleanup that will remove radioactive contaminants down to a level which will allow unrestricted, safe use of the Site in the future.
This is the stated goal of DOE's Formerly Utilized Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP).
And with good reason, since these radioactive wastes have a hazardous life of over 500,000 l
years.
Also, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), in an open public rulemaking (10CFR61), has decided that institutional measures to reduce public exposure at radioactive waste control disposal sites can only be relied upon for a period of up to 100 l
years.
In addition, the statement seems to imply that the proposed
" interim" action will constitute " final remediation" for this portion of the Site.
If so, the proposal clearly violates the prescribed, and still " suspended", sitewide full EIS/ ROD process.
Admiral Guimond's commitment (for DOE) that any final cleanup plan i
must have the community's full acceptance and NEPA/ CERCLA law both clearly require that the sitewide EIS process must be completed and the sitewide Record of Decision be must issued before any cleanup work at any part of the site can be considered " final remediation".
l The DOE's basic dose guideline (following cleanup) of 100 2) millirems per year above background is too high to adequately protect future generations either working (limited use exposure scenario) or living (unrestricted use exposure scenario) at the Site; it would allow a 33% to over 200% increase, respectively, in radiation-induced f atal cancers for the next 500,000 years.
EPA is currently proposing (at 40CFR196) a dose limit of 15 millirems per The New York State Department year above background af ter cleanup.
of Environmental Conservation's (NYSDEC) guideline, TAGM-4003, calls for cleanup to 10 millirems per year above background, which corresponds to an increase of 3.3% in fatal cancers.
t
?
The cleanup criteria for soils which DOE has selected for Tonawanda will not allow unrestricted use of the Site following cleanup.
After cleanup to the DOE's site-specific uranium criterion for Tonawanda's soils, DOE uranium remaining at the Site would produce 40 millirems per year of radiation dose above back-ground, according to DOE's own model for unrestricted use--the resident farmer scenario (page 8 of EE/CA).
The criteria for radium and thorium are taken from the US EPA's Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act guidelines (40CFR192) which were developed for remote western uranium mill tailings sites.
Cleanup to these criteria will impose an additional 600 millirems per year of dose above background, which corresponds to a 200% increase in o
radiation-induced fatal cancer, on unrestricted future users of the Site (see pp 24-26 of GAO report, attached).
Thus, an unrestricted future user of the Site could be exposed to more than a 200%
increased risk of premature fatal cancer.
DOE's cleanup criteria are sufficient to meet DOE's basic dose guideline (100 millirems per year above background) following cleanup only under a very restrictive industrial use exposure scenario.
Both Praxair workers and the community expect any cleanup, whether " interim" actions or " final remediation", to clean the Site more thoroughly, i.e. to meet the State dose guideline of 10 millirems per year above background, using an unrestricted use exposure scenario.
As indicated above, cleanup to a level that will allow unrestricted use is the stated goal of DOE's FUSRAP.
Also, DOE's assessment of risk considers only fatal cancer.
Residual contamination will also subject Site users to correspon-dingly elevated rates of non-fatal cancers, inheritable mutations, and birth defects--radiation health effects which DOE has ignored in their risk assessment, but which nonetheless will also impose additional high costs on the community.
- 3) On page 11 of the EE/CA, it is stated that " Clean material
[some of the debris from demolition of Building 38 or some of the soil from the pile] will be disposed at solid waste landfills or recycled."
As used here, " clean" includes contaminated materials at or just below the DOE's outdated cleanup criteria described above.
These criteria are inappropriate for densely populated, heavily used areas.
This means that DOE is planning to dispose of radioactive materials, with concentrations that deliver many times the State dose guideline, in local solid waste landfills which are not suitable for long-term storage of these long-lived wastes.
This is totally unacceptable to us.
I In 1981, Building 37 was demolished by Linde (Union Carbide).
I
" Debris from Building 37, having radioactivity exceeding twice the background level, was placed with the tailings [ contaminated soil pile)."
(page 6 of EE/CA)
At that time,
" clean" debris was probably material which surveyed at less than 20 uR/hr or about 160 millirems per year; this means some of it was up to 100 millirems
/
.y per year above background.
While not stated here, this material was deposited in an
[unkown]
area of the Town of Tonawanda Landfill, according to page 1-18 of the Remedial Investigation.
- Thus, according to the current State guideline some of this material is radioactive waste and does not belong in that landfill.
- 4) According to page 3-53 of the Baseline Risk Assessment (BRA), surface soil under Building 38 is contaminated above DOE cleanup criteria.
The removal of this contaminated soil is not included in the proposed action.
- However, site restoration activities are included under number (7) on page 18 of the EE/CA.
This means that contaminated soils under Building 38 which should be removed, even by DOE's inadequate criteria, may be mixed and re-graded with clean fill during site restoration activities, such that the concentrations of radioactive contaminants is reduced below DOE criteria.
This would be an illegal activity and we are firmly opposed to such a result.
DOE has a record in this regard.
At the Niagara Falls Storage Site at Lewiston, NY, the concentrated radioactivity in the ori-DOE ginal R-10 residue pile was diluted by similar mismanagement.
subsequently re-classified the R-10 residues as " wastes" (contami-nated soils) and now DOE wants to keep these residues--now higher-lower-concentration " wastes"--at Lewiston.
Under this
- volume, formula, DOE mismanagement equals more radiation dose for Lewiston (see pp 5-8 of 8-24-94 ROLE letter to DOE Secretary O' Leary, attached).
- 5) The EE/CA states on pages 7-8 that a sample of dust from a ceiling beam contained 42,000 pCi/g U-238 and 26 pCi/g Ra-226, while
" fixed" contamination ranged to 13,409 pCi/100 square centimeters for alpha particle radiation, and 172,881 pCi/100 square centimeters for beta-gamma radiation.
This is heavy contamination.
Yet the EE/CA gives only a sketchy description, on pages 13, 15 and 17, of how dispersal of heavily contaminated "Once uncovered, the particles will be prevented during demolition:
stored soil would be susceptible to wind and water erosion.
Dust from demolition and crushing activities could also be released to but these effects will be minimized or eliminated by the air.
the use of dust suppression measures and barriers to erosion daring
... Plastic sheeting will be used during the construc-rain events.
tion activities... As necessary, the stored soil and rubble will be misted with water to reduce the potential fcr spread of radioactive materials by the wind."
We do not believe the EE/CA gives an adequate description of the proposed action or the risks posed by it.
The demolition area will apparently not be totally enclosed in plastic.
Since the material may be stored onsite for some time before removal to a
- facility, a
Birdair style temporary total licensed disposal enclosure is desirable to assure containment both during demoli-tion and subsequent temporary storage.
.