S.C. waste coming to Oak Ridge

Some of that waste, containing radioactive tritium and other contaminants, is coming to Oak Ridge for treatment and packaging before being shipped west to Nevada or Utah for disposal. Two local facilities owned by Perma-Fix Environmental Services Inc. -- Diversified Scientific Services Inc. near Kingston and Materials & Energy Corp. in Oak Ridge -- have been hired to treat the so-called mixed waste, which contains both radioactive elements and hazardous chemicals.

"Not only is it radioactive for its tritium content, it is hazardous for mercury, which can make treatment of this waste challenging," Jacob Nims, project engineer with the government's contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, said in a statement released to the news media.

DOE's original plan was to let the legacy waste remain in South Carolina and allow the radioactive tritium to decay before shipping the waste off-site for disposal. The decay process, however, would have taken another 10 to 50 years, and the actual cleanup project wasn't scheduled to start until 2053.

Now, with money from the Recovery Act, Savannah River has put the waste disposal on a "fast track," the agency said.

John Lash, Perma-Fix Environmental's senior vice president for operations, said the company's DSSI facility on Gallaher Road has been treating Savannah River waste for years, including oils contaminated with tritium.

According to DOE, Savannah River plans to get rid of about 70 55-gallon stainless steel drums that have been welded shut. The drums contain plastic bottles and kegs of oils once used to lubricate equipment at the plant's old tritium facility, where radioactive material was processed for nuclear weapons. The waste oil has been stored at the site for years, some of it since the mid-1980s.

DOE said seven barrels of tritium- and mercury-contaminated oil were shipped to Oak Ridge in October.

Lash said the oils are treated in DSSI's thermal boiler system, and the ash residues are sent to the EnergySolutions landfill in Utah for disposal, he said.

Meanwhile, the M&EC facility, which is located at the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge, will receive about 36 containers of old equipment and debris containing tritium, Lash said. A few of those shipments have already arrived from Savannah River, but processing won't begin until M&EC constructs a new glovebox facility for the work, he said.

"We're hoping to get started in the January time frame," Lash said. The planned work required an amendment to M&EC's operating license from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, he said.

Lash said the glovebox is being constructed specifically for the Savannah River work, with filters to capture any tritium that comes off as the equipment is processed. Those filters will be included in the shipping containers and sent, along with the radioactive equipment, to the Nevada Test Site for disposal, he said.

All Perma-Fix facilities were barred from shipping waste to Nevada a year ago because of problems with external contamination on some containers, including ones that originated at the M&EC facility in Oak Ridge. After a series of inspections, covering a few months, the ban was lifted.

Lash said he doesn't anticipate problems with the Savannah River work, and he said any emissions will be within the limits specified in the company's permits.

Not everyone, however, is pleased about more waste coming to Oak Ridge.

Susan Gawarecki, executive director of the Local Oversight Committee, which reviews environmental activities for local governments, said Oak Ridge's image as a haven for nuclear waste doesn't help economic development. In the past, the state of Tennessee was able to gain leverage in negotiations with DOE because of waste bring brought to Oak Ridge to be burned at DOE's toxic-waste incinerator. It also gave the state some "equity" when working with other states, such as New Mexico and Nevada, to send Oak Ridge wastes to their states for disposal, she said.

Now, however, DOE is closing its Oak Ridge incinerator, and when DOE sends nuclear waste to the multiple commercial facilities located in the Oak Ridge area, there's no leverage or equity to be had, Gawarecki said. "There should be some sort of compensation for the community," she said.

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