On June 5, 2019, I posted a blog titled Mitigating Nuclear Hazards - Part 3 Production describing some of my professional experiences working on clean up of uranium mill sites. I concluded the blog to say, “In summary, with adequate regulatory oversight and inspections, processes to produce uranium can be done safely and protect the environment.”
The oversight of constructing a new uranium processing site in the U.S. today would be vastly different than what occurred during the Cold War rush to produce atomic weapons. Many of the lingering problems existing at mill sites occurred during operations in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, before EPA was created, where radioactive and heavy metal waste mill tailings spread in air, on the land, in water, and was used for construction materials. Today many private companies are in the process of turning remediated sites over to state and federal governments for costly long-term monitoring and surveillance as described in the news below.
On August 15, 2022, a reporter contacted me to provide more information:
“Dear Mr. Dam, I hope this finds you well. I'm reaching out from nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica, where I'm an environment journalist. My team recently published a story about the decades-long cleanup saga at the former Homestake uranium mill in northwest New Mexico. We're busy reporting a follow-up story that will examine the state of reclamation at every former uranium mill in the country. Thanks very much for sending us your thoughts in response to that story (if you didn't find it on our website, you might've come across the project via our partners at PBS NewsHour, the LA Times or KOB4). I'm emailing you to follow up on your submission and would love to pick your brain about your experiences. Would you be available to schedule a time to chat about your work with the NRC, the USGS and DOE's Legacy Management office? If so, could you let me know some times that would be most convenient for you? Thanks in advance for your time, and I hope we can connect soon. You can reach me at mark.olalde@propublica.org” Mark Olalde
I spoke with Mark for about an hour describing some of my work experiences starting almost 39 years ago with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and how much we learned along the way. We spoke again earlier last week to discuss the article. I greatly appreciate his interest, knowledge and desire to accurately quote me and get the story right.
Yesterday, on December 3, 2022, Mark Olade sent an email with a link to the news article:
“Hi, Bill. Thanks again for taking the time to speak with me several times about this story and for reviewing our findings. Our piece published today, and you can find it here: https://www.propublica.org/article/uranium-mills-pollution-cleanup-us. Best, Mark”
The title of the article is “Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater” and here are a few excerpts:
“Regulators haven’t made a full accounting of whether they properly addressed groundwater contamination. So, for the first time, ProPublica cataloged cleanup efforts at the country’s 48 uranium mills, seven related processing sites and numerous tailings piles.
At least 84% of the sites have polluted groundwater. And nearly 75% still have either no liner or only a partial liner between mill waste and the ground, leaving them susceptible to leaking pollution into groundwater.
The DOE estimates that some sites have individually polluted more than a billion gallons of water.
Bill Dam, who spent decades regulating and researching uranium mill cleanup with the NRC, at the DOE and in the private sector, said water pollution won’t be controlled until all the waste and contaminated material is moved. “The federal government’s taken a Band-Aid approach to groundwater contamination,” he said.
The pollution has disproportionately harmed Indian Country.
Between 1958 and 1962, a mill near Gunnison, Colorado, churned through 540,000 tons of ore. The process, one step in concentrating the ore into weapons-grade uranium, leaked uranium and manganese into groundwater, and in 1990, regulators found that residents had been drawing that contaminated water from 22 wells.
The DOE moved the waste and connected residents to clean water. But pollution lingered in the aquifer beneath the growing town where some residents still get their water from private wells. The DOE finally devised a plan in 2000, which the NRC later approved, settling on a strategy called “natural flushing,” essentially waiting for groundwater to dilute the contamination until it reached safe levels.
In 2015, the agency acknowledged that the plan had failed. Sediments absorb and release uranium, so waiting for contamination to be diluted doesn’t solve the problem, said Dam, the former NRC and DOE regulator.”
So what did I mean by saying the government has taken a Band-Aid approach to groundwater contamination? The “cut” from these uranium processing sites is much deeper than just at the surface. Most of the funding for remediation went towards the surface clean-up like removing a cancerous mole. But beneath the surface, contaminated groundwater spreads contamination through soil and rocks. Groundwater is monitored at most sites to observe changing concentrations over decades but very little is known about the deeper minerals like iron hematite holding and releasing contaminants in the groundwater as biogeochemical conditions change. The government is choosing a temporary fix at many sites to wait and see if nature can remove the contamination or increase acceptable limits.
Ultimately, what is needed are improved scientific, collaborative site characterization assessments as we were rarely doing at DOE-LM such as on the Riverton, WY site where contamination spread onto tribal land. The collaboration enabled opposition groups to work together by developing partnerships with tribal consultants, federal and state scientists, and DOE National Laboratory experts.
So hopefully the work of ProPublica and other news organizations, as well as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and advocacy groups (here’s my article to PEER), can focus on budget needs for science research that got cut over the past several years especially during the Trump Administration. I borrowed the cover cross-section from the U.S. Geological Survey Toxics Hydrology program, which in my opinion is one of the most important organizations to independently evaluate groundwater contamination yet is very poorly funded and barely survived the war on truth and science. Here’s an example of continued collaboration that continued after I left DOE to follow up on the Riverton, WY research among university, USGS scientists, and myself by investigating the Little Wind River, downgradient from the former uranium mill site, located on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Thanks to the readers of this blog to continually strengthen collaboration and communications among scientists, media, policy makers and concerned citizens!