Feed Materials Production Center
The U.S. DOE Feed Materials Production Center is located, twenty miles northwest of Cincinnati, Ohio in the town of Fernald, Ohio. The 1050 acre facility operated from 1951 to 1989, producing high-purity uranium metals products for the U.S. defense program. In 1991 U.S. DOE and U.S. EPA entered into a Consent Agreement requiring cleanup of the site under CERCLA. The site has been divided into five Operable Units of which the Records of Decision have been signed for all. There have been 30 removal actions implemented of which 27 are completed. This cleanup is a model of cooperation between U.S. DOE, U.S. EPA, Ohio EPA, the Fernald Citizen's Task Force, and other local stakeholders to reach consensus on cleanup and a future for the site.
The site has been divided into five Operable Units (OU). They include:
The Records of Decision (ROD) signed to date include:
All five Records of Decision (RODs) were signed between 1994 and 1996 addressing all of the operable units at the site. Further, 27 of the 30 Removal Actions were completed between 1991 and 1999. However, failure of a pilot-scale vitrification plant to treat waste stored in three silos (Operable Unit 4) resulted in the need to amend the ROD for this operable unit (12/29/00). Currently, plans are being developed and facilities are being constructed to remove the materials from the silos prior to treatment to accelerate the process, which will ship the materials to an offsite disposal facility by 2006. To date the Silos project is 20% complete.
A railroad line and a waste/soil drying and loading facility to treat and ship waste materials from six waste pits to Envirocare of Utah has been completed with the first rail shipment occurring April 26, 1999. Waste from the pits is excavated, thermally dried, packaged in rail cars, and sent via rail for offsite disposal at Envirocare. To date, the project is 60% complete with 90 unit trains having shipped over 500,000 tons of the projected 790,000 tons of waste in the pits. The project is projected to be completed in 2005.
Five of the planned seven cells of the Onsite Disposal Facility (OSDF) have been completed. Cell one is full and has been capped; Cell 2 is 95% filled; Cell 4 is 51% filled; and Cells 4 and 5 have the lower liner constructed and are receiving waste materials. Approximately 1,000,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris has been placed in the five cells. The OSDF is projected to be completed in 2006 and to hold approximately 2.5 million cubic yards of material.
The process of safe shutdown to remove contaminated materials from pipelines and other equipment from 130 buildings at the site was completed in March 1999. Also, 112 of the 223 total structures have been demolished, and the demolition materials are being placed in the OSDF. This project is 50% complete. Also, all nuclear materials previously stored onsite have been dispositioned offsite as of May 2002.
contamination is being contained via an extraction system installed
in 1991. An extensive network of extraction and injection wells
were installed and began operation in August 1998 to expedite the
time required to remove and treat contaminated groundwater from
25 to 10 years. Since that time 7.5 million gallons of groundwater
have been pumped from the aquifer removing 3,600 pounds of uranium.
The groundwater is being treated to return the aquifer to drinking
water standards. Also, the Southern Waste Units, the largest source
of groundwater contamination from the Fernald site has been removed.
Over 50% of the site area has been demonstrated to have attained
final soil cleanup levels.
An accelerated cleanup program is underway to complete the cleanup of the entire facility, except for groundwater remediation, within ten years. Groundwater remediation is anticipated to take up to 25 years to complete. This accelerated schedule will save $3 billion in cleanup costs. The future vision of the site includes an on-site disposal facility in the northeast portion of the site capable of holding 1.8 million cubic yards of low-level contaminated soil and debris, and the off-site disposal of the higher level contaminated materials such as the Silos and waste pit materials. The disposal cell will occupy approximately 350 acres of the site, the remainder of which will be available for recreational use, excluding the protection of some wetland areas.