Lab to Co-host Nuke-plant Cleanup Workshop
The Los Alamos National Laboratory said on September 22 that it is co-hosting a NATO Advanced Research Workshop to develop a remediation plan for a former Estonian uranium processing plant. The workshop is scheduled for October 5 to 9 in Tallin, Estonia and will cover the clean up of the tailings pond.
The plant's tailings pond is 25 meters deep and encompasses an area approximately the size of 120 football fields. The pond also contains oil shale ash from electric-power and chemical plants and tailings from processing of rare-earth metals. It reportedly exudes above-normal levels of radon gas and leaks material into the Gulf of Finland. Also, the dike holding the estimated 8-million cubic meters of tailings could fail.
The workshop, "Turning a Problem into a Resource: Remediation and Waste Management at the Sillamäe Site, Estonia," should attract researchers from 13 countries. They will discuss alternative environmental remediation technologies--some with possible application at other cleanup sites. Other discussions will relate to legal and regulatory issues specific to the Estonian processing plant; new processing technologies for producing rare-earth metals; and other environmental issues.
Scientists from Los Alamos' Chemical Science and Technology, Nuclear Materials and Technology, and Earth and Environmental Sciences Divisions and the Environmental Management Program Office are participating in the workshop. They will either lecture or chair sessions.
Cheryl Rofer of Los Alamos' Geology and Geochemistry Group is a workshop co-director. Tönis Kaasik of ÖkoSil Limited, a partly government-owned company hired by the Estonian government, is the other co-director.
Rofer proffered that Los Alamos has "the technology available to stabilize the low-level waste in the pond. We also have the capability to better characterize what's in the pond and its current state. In addition, we have magnetic separation and solvent extraction technologies to help with the current mineral processing activities taking place there."
"At the end of the workshop, we will forward recommendations to the Estonian government as to what we think are the best ways to deal with the uranium tailings pond at the plant," said Rofer.
A book on the workshop is scheduled to be published next spring.
Additional information about NATO's advanced research workshops is available at http://www.lanl.gov/Internal/projects/
NATO_Estonia/index.htm
The University of California manages the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy.