You may have seen an article in The State regarding the NRC’s Oct. 1 – Dec. 31, 2019 Inspection Report of the Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility. The below is the comment that the company has issued to members of the media regarding the report.
“As indicated on page 11 of the NRC inspection report, the Site self-identified the pinhole flaws during the quarterly liner leak check in December 2019. Spiking Station 1 was shut down upon this discovery. No leaks were identified in the previous quarterly liner leak check in August 2019. Additionally, there is no evidence of leakage of the spiking station system fluids since the previous quarterly liner leak check.
Spiking Station 1 is in the process of being replaced with a new spiking station that significantly improves its design to prevent leakage and eliminates the need for a liner. The floor under the existing liner will be inspected as part of that replacement project. Appropriate corrective actions have been taken for the causes of this issue.”
- Ensure that CFFF procedures match the actions performed by Richland County’s Bomb Squad or other off-site responders coming to our site in the event of an incident.
- Help build stronger relationships between CFFF’s response units and our local emergency responders.
- Allow local emergency responders to train in a different environment.
- Allow local emergency responders a chance to become more familiar with our site.
- Allow local emergency responders to better understand the capabilities of the CFFF response teams.
- Employee exposure to chemicals.
- The frequency of strains, sprains, and repetitive motion injuries by employees.
- The potential for fire hazards at the facility.
- The need to purchase and store certain chemicals on site.
- Waste disposal is related to the process.
- The risk for potential release of chemicals.
- It has increased our security of supply.
- The plant can redirect more financial and employee resources to target areas within our current transformation process.
- It creates production space in the plant to develop our lean manufacturing process further.
- Groundwater, surface water, and sediment data indicate that there are no (“Constituents of Potential Concern) COPCs migrating off the site.
- No source of Tc-99 was identified in soil.
- Analysis of groundwater samples from four private water supply wells identified no COPCs related to CFFF manufacturing operations. The closest private water supply well is over 1 mile downgradient of the known areas impacted by of COPCs. The private water supply well survey findings reinforce that there is no potential for COPCs from CFFF to impact private water supply wells.
- Approximately 45,000 ft3 of radiologically contaminated sludge, soil, and debris from the closure of CFFF East Lagoon treatment/settling pond
- Approximately 50,400 ft3 of contaminated calcium fluoride solids placed in a storage pile
- Up to 526 obsolete uranium hexafluoride cylinders with internal radioactive contamination
- Additional soil waste generated from remediation and closure of the East Lagoon
- There was a question related to the fact that the site-specific dose methodology used to calculate doses to workers and the public is proprietary to USEI. The method is not public, which makes it difficult for the public to verify the calculations. NRC stated that the inputs and outputs for this submittal are in the request submitted by Westinghouse, which is publicly available. NRC’s technical review letter of the site-specific dose methodology is also publicly available, which should help with understanding the results of the public dose calculations (mentioned in the preceding paragraphs).
- There were several questions related to how this licensing action impacted the Environmental Assessment for the CFFF license renewal. In response, NRC stated that other licensees have submitted licensing activities in parallel to license renewal. The renewal is typically a several-year process, and that as they work through their review process of the alternate disposal request, it will be included in the license renewal. Additionally, NRC stated that the requested action would help environmental activities on-site (because it is tied to remediation/cleanup efforts) and that they can work on both activities separately. Finally, NRC shared that as a new and separate licensing action from the license renewal, they would consider what the appropriate NEPA action is for this request. If it is determined that there is a need to include this in the license renewal, it would be considered under cumulative impacts. However, NRC also cautioned that they could not speak on specific details or effects at the time of the meeting, as the Westinghouse request had just been received, so NRC has not begun their review or made any decisions related to the alternate disposal request at that time.
- Lastly, there was a question related to how long the cleanup/disposal activity would take. We stated that the schedule is based on several factors. Still, assuming NRC approval of the alternate disposal request happens in December 2020 and work were to begin in January 2021, completion would occur in summer/fall 2021.