Hematite, MO 
Nuclear fuel plant waste linked to tainted Jefferson County Well 

AP 15feb02

ST. LOUIS — Tests show radioactive and chemical waste from a plant where fuel rods for the nation's nuclear reactors once were made has surfaced in well water of a nearby home, state officials said. Randy Maley, a state environmental specialist, said testing over the past two months near the former Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. plant revealed chemical solvents and possible traces of technetium-99, a radioactive fission product believed to have been there during the Cold War.

The plant, in Hematite, about 35 miles south of St. Louis, was shut down last summer.

Low levels of technetium-99 had turned up in a monitoring well at the plant in the early 1990s, but later tests of area drinking wells showed no contamination.

Department of Health environmental engineer Chuck Hooper said the technetium levels detected would not be considered a serious health threat, but the solvents exceeded state and federal safety standards, meaning they could pose a cancer risk.

Kevin Hayes, manager of environmental health and safety at the plant, said officials with Westinghouse Electric Co., the site's current owner, confirmed the presence of the solvents but requested more testing. "Our perspective is that the state's results raised more questions than they answered," Hayes said in Thursday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "If it's coming from us, we'll work with the agencies and develop a plan to deal with it effectively."

Westinghouse installed a filter on the well Monday to deal with the solvents and was paying for bottled drinking water for the well's users, Hayes said. The well is two-tenths of a mile from the plant.

British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., Westinghouse's parent company, bought the nuclear fuel holdings of Swiss-based Asea Brown Boveri Ltd., which had run the plant since 1989.

• Combustion Engineering **
  Industry & Science
  Hematite, MO
  
  Uranium Fuel Fabrication(3 inspections/year)
  fuel rod fabrication plant
  
  

• United Nuclear *
  Production
  Hermatite, MO
  reactor fuel production
  sd 1972
  Source: http://www.prop1.org/prop1/radiated/mo0rept.htm 
  
  

• Reactor Manufacturers: 
  General Electric - www.ge.com
  Westinghouse - www.westinghouse.com
  Framatone Technologies (formerly Babcock & Wilcox) - www.framatech.com
  Asea Brown Boveri/Combustion Engineering* - www.abb.com
  
  * ABB's worldwide nuclear businesses were acquired by Westinghouse on May 2, 2000.  The former ABB-CE fuel fabrication facility in Hematite, Mo., will be closed over an 18-month period and most of the company's U.S. fuel operations will be consolidated at the existing Westinghouse facility in Columbia, S.C.
  source: http://www.nmcco.com/facts/general/general_home.htm 
  
  

• The Department of Energy has repeatedly fined contractors for lax controls over uranium and plutonium handled at its weapons plants. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates civilian atomic projects, licenses seven processing plants and inspects them twice a year for criticality safety.
  There are two installations in Lynchburg, Va., and one each in Hematite, Mo.; Columbia, S.C.; Erwin, Tenn.; Richland, Wash., and Wilmington, N.C.
  source: http://tms.physics.lsa.umich.edu/214/other/news/100199japan-reaction.html 
  
  

• Processed and recycled scrap uranium materials, early 1960s. Duration of work and quantity of material handled unclear.
  
  

• Tainted uranium, danger widely distributed Peter Eisler, USA TODAY 24jun01 (excerpt)
  For years, state investigators wondered why radioactive technetium-99 was turning up in drinking water wells near the old Mallinckrodt Chemical uranium fuel-making plant in Hematite, Mo. Now they think they have an answer: The plant was one of several in and around St. Louis where Mallinckrodt and its successors used thousands of tons of recycled uranium to fabricate metallic fuel rods for nuclear reactors. "We believe the contamination we're now seeing at the site is related to the (recycling) program," says Ron Kucera of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Plans to clean up extensive pollution from uranium wastes at Hematite are snagged by questions over who is responsible for the technetium. That element requires special disposal because it has a half-life of 213,000 years and moves easily into soil and water. Technetium wasn't expected at Hematite because it is produced only when uranium is irradiated in a nuclear reactor — and Hematite had no reactor. "The Department of Energy has resisted efforts to become involved because even though they may have some liability, they don't want to pay anything," Kucera says. The Hematite facility was part of a nationwide network of private and federally owned plants and labs that produced fuel and other components for the nearly 70,000 U.S. nuclear weapons built before production was phased out in the early 1990s. Many of them used recycled uranium. The recycling began at the dawn of the Cold War. Officials in the weapons program were seeking ways to reuse the costly uranium that was irradiated in nuclear reactors to make plutonium and other fissile explosives for bomb cores.
  source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/poison/2001-06-25-hotnukes.htm 
  
  

• Unplanned Nuclear Reaction Rare  H. JOSEF HEBERT / AP1oct01
  WASHINGTON -- There has been only one case in more than three decades in which an unplanned nuclear chain reaction occurred at an American nuclear fuel fabrication plant, industry and government officials say. But it killed a worker. It is extremely rare for nuclear fuel to reach unexpected ``criticality,'' as apparently occurred at a fuel plant Thursday in Japan where three workers were exposed to high levels of radiation and hundreds of people were evacuated before the reaction was controlled. There are seven nuclear fuel fabrication plants in the United States. The only incident involving a nuclear chain reaction at a fabrication plant was 35 years ago at a plant no longer in operation near Charleston, R.I., said Michael Weber of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The incident in 1964 occurred when a worker poured a bottle of uranium solution into a container for which it was not suited and the material went critical as he leaned over the vat, killing him, Weber said. Eight years ago at a fabrication plant operated by General Electric in Wilmington, N.C., workers struggled for several days to keep uranium in a vat of water to avert a nuclear chain reaction. They finally succeeded in cooling down the uranium by injecting oxygen. ``They took a (uranium) solution and introduced it into (what) ... was not a suitable tank,'' said Weber, violating NRC rules for safeguarding the nuclear material. ``There are very strict controls that we put on the plants,'' said Weber. These include specifications on how much uranium can be in a container, the shape of the container and the mass within a container. If any of these requirements are violated, criticality can occur, he explained. The accident in Japan occurred at a fuel fabrication plant, similar to seven such plants operated by private companies in the United States, although the fabrication process in Japan is somewhat different, nuclear expert said. While the Japan incident continues to be investigated, it is believed the nuclear chain reaction occurred when workers placed more than six times the amount of uranium allowed into a vat of nitric acid, said an industry source who spoke on condition of not being further identified. The acid normally is used to remove impurities from recycled uranium left over from fabricated fuel pellets, although the exact purpose of the actions at the Japanese plant were not immediately known. ``This is a serious nuclear accident,'' Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in a telephone interview from Russia, where he is visiting nuclear facilities. ``The good news is that it is not a widely contaminated area. It's a limited area.'' Richardson said the United States and Russia were prepared to send a joint team of nuclear experts to help Japan deal with the problem. As of late Thursday, no request for such assistance had been received. Officials in Japan said radiation levels near the plant were back to normal. But the issue was sure to fuel further the attack on Japan's nuclear program, which, unlike the U.S. program, includes reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and widely using plutonium mixed-oxide fuel. There is no indication plutonium was involved in the radiation incident, however. ``Clearly, the Japanese are stepping ahead of themselves. It should give them pause,'' said Paul Leventhal, head of the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute. The group has been critical of Japan's fuel reprocessing, arguing it leads to increased concerns about proliferation of nuclear materials including plutonium. The United States banned nuclear fuel recycling in the 1970s because of concern it would make it easier for nuclear materials -- especially weapons-suitable plutonium -- to fall into the wrong hands. The uranium fuel cycle in the United States is spread across a number of facilities. First, uranium ore is converted to hexafloride gas, then it is shipped to another plant for enrichment, and then to one of seven fuel fabrication plants that turn the gaseous or liquid uranium into powder and then reactor fuel pellets. According to the NRC, the seven U.S. nuclear fuel fabrication plants are: an ABB Combustion Engineering plant in Hematite, Mo.; a General Electric plant in Wilmington, N.C.; a Westinghouse plant in Columbia, S.C.; a Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin, Tenn.; the Framatome Cogema Fuels plant in Lynchburg, Va.; the BWX Technolgies plant, also in Lynchburg; and a Siemens Power Corp. plant in Richland, Wash. 
  source: http://www.beachbrowser.com/Archives/Environment/October-99/Unplanned-Nuclear-Reaction-Rare.htm