[Federal Register Volume 70, Number 118 (Tuesday, June 21, 2005)]
[Notices]
[Pages 35744-35745]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E5-3199]
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Draft Report for Comment: ``Consideration of Geochemical Issues
in Groundwater Restoration at Uranium In-Situ Leach Mining
Facilities,'' NUREG/CR-6870
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Notice of availability and request for comments.
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Background
Some mining processes use fluids to dissolve (or leach) a mineral
without the need to remove physically the ore containing the mineral
from an ore deposit in the ground. In general, these ``in-situ'' leach
mining operations at uranium mines are considerably more
environmentally benign than traditional mining and milling of uranium
ore. Nonetheless, the use of leaching fluids to mine uranium may
contaminate the groundwater aquifer in and around the region from which
the uranium is extracted. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
requires licensees to restore the aquifer to established water-quality
standards following the cessation of in-situ leach mining operations.
The NRC also requires licensees to ensure that sufficient funds
will be available to cover the cost of decommissioning their
facilities. For these uranium mines, restoration generally consists of
pumping specially treated water into the affected aquifer and removing
the displaced water--and thereby the undesirable contaminants--from the
system. Because groundwater restoration can represent approximately 40
percent of the cost of decommissioning a uranium leach mining facility,
a good estimate of the necessary volume of treatment water is important
to estimate the cost of decommissioning accurately.
The subject report, prepared for the NRC by the U.S. Geological
Survey, summarizes the application of a geochemical model to the
restoration process to estimate the degree to which a licensee has
decontaminated a site where a leach mining process has been used.
Toward that end, this report analyzes the respective amounts of water
and chemical additives pumped into the mined regions to remove and
neutralize the residual contamination using 10 different restoration
strategies. The analyses show that strategies that used hydrogen
sulfide in systems with low natural oxygen content provided the best
results. On the basis of those findings, this report also summarizes
[[Page 35745]]
the conditions under which various restoration strategies will prove
successful. This, in turn, will allow more accurate estimates of
restoration and decommissioning costs.
The subject report will be useful for licensees and State
regulators overseeing uranium leach mining facilities, who need to
estimate the volume of treatment water needed to decontaminate those
facilities.
Solicitation of Comments: The NRC seeks comments on the report and
is especially interested in comments on the utility and feasibility of
the modeling techniques described in the report.
DATES: The NRC will consider all written comments received before
August 31, 2005. Comments received after August 31, 2005, will be
considered if it is practical to do so, but the NRC staff is able to
ensure consideration only for comments received on or before this date.
Comments should be addressed to the contact listed below.
Availability: An electronic version of the report is available in
Adobe Portable Document Format at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/contract/cr6870/cr6870.pdf and can be read with
Adobe Acrobat Reader software, available at no cost from http://www.adobe.com. Hard and electronic copies are available from the
contact listed below.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. John D. Randall, Mail Stop T9C34,
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD
20852, telephone (301) 415-6192, e-mail [email protected].
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 10th day of June, 2005.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Cheryl A. Trottier,
Chief, Radiation Protection, Environmental Risk & Waste Management
Branch, Division of Systems Analysis and Regulatory Effectiveness,
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
[FR Doc. E5-3199 Filed 6-20-05; 8:45 am]
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