Kitty Litter Called on to Sop up Radioactive Groundwater

The West Valley Demonstration Project (NY) will get a subterranean wall of cat litter to constrain seepage of radioactive groundwater from the former nuclear fuel-reprocessing center. The method will supplant pump and treat methods that cost U.S.$1millio a year.

The site reportedly will be the first in the country to use an underground barrier of linoptilolite--a zeolite mineral used as cat litter--for groundwater remediation.

Officials, according to Newsday, said the new technology, tested at the University at Buffalo, will cost about $1 million total and last more than 25 years.

Construction of the barrier began on Aug. 23. Authorities would stop the plume of groundwater from advancing to allow time for planning a permanent fix for conditions at the West Valley site, which is 40 miles south of Buffalo.

Four options now include:

• indefinitely monitoring and maintaining the site;
  
• removing all traces of the project and its waste;
  
• storing all waste and residual contamination in an above-ground facility; or
  
• filling all underground facilities with concrete and capping the site.

Since 1997, more than 600,000 gallons of highly radioactive waste have been removed from rusting underground tanks at the site and solidified into a glasslike solid. The containers of waste eventually will be shipped to a permanent storage facility.

Edited by Paul Hersch