[Federal Register Volume 74, Number 237 (Friday, December 11, 2009)]
[Notices]
[Pages 65804-65806]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E9-29547]


=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

[NRC-2008-0391]


Notice of Availability of Draft Environmental Impact Statement 
for the Lost Creek In-Situ Recovery (ISR) Project in Sweetwater County, 
WY; Supplement to the Generic Environmental Impact Statement for In-
Situ Leach Uranium Milling Facilities

AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

ACTION: Notice of Availability.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY: Notice is hereby given that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission (NRC) is issuing for public comment a draft Supplemental 
Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the Lost Creek In-Situ 
Uranium Recovery (ISR) Project. By letter dated March 20, 2008, Lost 
Creek ISR, LLC (LCI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of UR-Energy USA, Inc. 
submitted an application to the NRC for a new source material license 
for the Lost Creek ISR Project, which LCI proposes to be located in the 
Great Divide Basin in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. LCI is proposing to 
recover uranium from the Lost Creek ISR Project site using the in-situ 
leach (also known as the in-situ recovery ISR) process.
    The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended by the Uranium Mill 
Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978, authorizes the NRC to issue 
licenses for the possession and use of source material and byproduct 
material. These statutes require that NRC license facilities, including 
ISR operations, in accordance with NRC regulatory requirements to 
protect public health and safety from radiological hazards. Under the 
NRC's environmental protection regulations in the Code of Federal 
Regulations, Title 10, Part 51 (10 CFR Part 51), that implement the 
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), preparation of an 
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) or supplement to an EIS (SEIS) is 
required for issuance of a license to possess and use source material 
for uranium milling (see 10 CFR 51.20(b)(8)).
    In June 2009, the NRC staff issued NUREG-1910, ``Generic 
Environmental Impact Statement for In-Situ Leach Uranium Milling 
Facilities'' (herein referred to as the GEIS). In the GEIS, NRC 
assessed the potential environmental impacts from the construction, 
operation, aquifer restoration, and decommissioning of an ISR facility 
located in four specific geographic regions of the western United 
States. The proposed Lost Creek ISR Project is located within the 
Wyoming West Uranium Milling Region identified in the GEIS. This draft 
SEIS supplements the GEIS and incorporates by reference relevant 
portions from the GEIS, and uses site-specific information from the 
applicant's license application and other independent sources to 
fulfill the requirements in 10 CFR 51.20(b)(8).

DATES: The public comment period on the draft SEIS begins with 
publication of this notice and continues until February 1, 2010. 
Written comments should be submitted as described in the ADDRESSES 
section of this notice. The NRC will consider comments received, or 
postmarked, after that date to the extent practical.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any one of the following methods. 
Please include Docket ID NRC-2008-0391 in the subject line of your 
comments. Comments submitted in writing or in electronic form will be 
posted on the NRC Web site and on the Federal rulemaking Web site 
http://www.regulations.gov. Because your comments will not be edited to 
remove any identifying or contact information, the NRC cautions you 
against including any information in your submission that you do not 
want to be publicly disclosed.
    The NRC requests that any party soliciting or aggregating comments 
received from other persons for submission to the NRC inform those 
persons that the NRC will not edit their comments to remove any 
identifying or contact information, and therefore, they should not 
include any information in their comments that they do not want 
publicly disclosed.
    Federal Rulemaking Web site: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and 
search for documents filed under Docket ID NRC-2008-0391. Comments may 
be submitted electronically through this Web site. Address questions 
about NRC dockets to Carol Gallagher 301-492-3668; e-mail 
[email protected].
    Mail comments to: Michael T. Lesar, Chief, Rulemaking and 
Directives Branch (RDB), Division of Administrative Services, Office of 
Administration, Mail Stop: TWB-05-B01M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, or by fax to RDB at (301) 492-
3446. Comments can also be submitted electronically to the following 
address: [email protected].
    Publicly available documents related to this notice can be accessed 
using the following methods:
    NRC's Public Document Room (PDR): The public may examine and have

[[Page 65805]]

copied, for a fee, publicly available documents at the NRC's PDR, 
Public File Area O1 F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, Maryland.
    NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS): 
Publicly available documents created or received at the NRC are 
available electronically at the NRC's Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. From this page, the public can gain 
entry into ADAMS, which provides text and image files of NRC's public 
documents. If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems 
in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC's PDR 
reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to 
[email protected]. The ``Environmental Impact Statement for the Lost 
Creek ISR Project in Sweetwater County, Wyoming--Supplement to the 
Generic Environmental Impact Statement for In-Situ Leach Uranium 
Milling Facilities'' is available electronically under ADAMS Accession 
Number ML093350051.
    The draft SEIS for the Lost Creek ISR Project also may be accessed 
on the internet at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/ by selecting ``NUREG-1910.'' The draft SEIS will be a 
Supplement 3 to NUREG-1910. Additionally, a copy of the draft SEIS will 
be available at the following public libraries:

Sweetwater County Library, 300 North 1st Street East, Green River, 
Wyoming 82935, 307-875-8615.
Rock Springs Branch Library, 400 C Street, Rock Springs, Wyoming 82901, 
307-352-6667.

    Federal Rulemaking Web site: Public comments and supporting 
materials related to this notice can be found at http://www.regulations.gov by searching on Docket ID: NRC-2008-0391.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For information on environmental 
review process related to the draft SEIS for the Lost Creek Project, 
please contact Alan Bjornsen, Project Manager, Division of Waste 
Management and Environmental Protection (DWMEP), Mail Stop T-8F5, U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC, 20555-001, by phone at 1 
(800) 368-5642, extension 1195. For general or technical information 
associated with the safety and licensing of uranium milling facilities, 
please contact Stephen Cohen, Team Lead, Uranium Recovery Branch, 
DWMEP, Mail Stop T-8F5, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, 
DC 20555-0001, by phone at 1 (800) 368-5642, extension 7182.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended by 
the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978, authorizes NRC 
to issue licenses for the possession and use of source material and 
byproduct material. These statutes require that NRC license facilities, 
including ISR operations, in accordance with NRC regulatory 
requirements to project public health and safety from radiological 
hazards. ISR uranium recovery facilities must meet NRC regulatory 
requirements in order to obtain this license to operate. Under the 
NRC's environmental protection regulations in Title 10, Part 
51.20(b)(8) of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR Part 51), which 
implements NEPA, issuance of a license to possess and use source 
material for uranium milling requires an EIS or a supplement to an EIS.
    To fulfill this requirement, the NRC staff and its contractor, the 
Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses, in cooperation with the 
Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (Land Quality Division), 
issued in June 2009, NUREG-1910, ``Generic Environmental Impact 
Statement for In-Situ Uranium Milling Facilities'' (the GEIS). The GEIS 
assessed the potential environmental impacts associated with the 
construction, operation, aquifer restoration, and decommissioning of an 
ISR facility in four specific geographic areas of the western United 
States (U.S.). The proposed Lost Creek ISR Project is located in one 
such region, the Wyoming West Uranium Milling Region. The GEIS 
evaluated the range of potential impacts in the four geographic regions 
and evaluated whether the potential impact would be essentially the 
same for all ISR facilities or whether site-specific information and 
analysis would be required to determine the potential impacts. As such, 
the GEIS provides a starting point for the NRC's NEPA analyses for 
site-specific license applications for new ISR facilities, as well as 
for applications to renew or amend existing ISR licenses.
    By letter dated March 20, 2008, Lost Creek ISR, LLC (LCI), a 
wholly-owned subsidiary of UR Energy USA, Inc., submitted an 
application to the NRC for a new source material license for the Lost 
Creek ISR Project, which LCI proposes to be located 24 km (15 mi) 
southwest of the Town of Bairoil, and 61 km (38 mi) northwest of the 
Town of Rawlins. The City of Rock Springs is located approximately 135 
km (53 mi) to the southwest, and the City of Casper is located 
approximately 144 km (90 mi) to the northwest of the Lost Creek ISR 
Project site. Planned facilities associated with the proposed Lost 
Creek ISR Project include a central plant with uranium processing 
capabilities; six well fields with injection, production, and monitor 
wells, header houses, pipeline to connect the well fields with the 
central plant, and an access road network. The proposed license area 
consists of approximately 1709 ha (4220 ac) and is remotely located on 
private land with about 15 percent of the surface rights being 
administered by the State of Wyoming. The U.S. Department of Interior, 
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers surface rights for the 
major part (85 percent) of the proposed project area. As such, the NRC 
coordinated its environmental review with BLM to promote efficiencies 
in each agencies environmental review. This coordination was undertaken 
in tandem with developing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the 
BLM which establishes a cooperating agency status between the agencies. 
The MOU was finalized on November 30, 2009, and NRC plans to use it in 
the review of applications that are in their early stages. This will 
allow us to effectively integrate BLM as a cooperating agency into the 
review of future applications.
    ISR facilities recover uranium from low grade ores that may not be 
economically recoverable by other methods. In the ISR process, a 
leaching agent (called a lixiviant), such as oxygen and sodium 
bicarbonate, is added to native groundwater for injection through wells 
into the subsurface ore body to dissolve the uranium. Before ISR 
operations can begin, the portion of the aquifer designated for uranium 
recovery must be exempted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 
(EPA) from being an underground source of drinking water in accordance 
with the Safe Drinking Water Act (as implemented by EPA at 40 CFR 
146.4). The injected solution, now containing the dissolved uranium, is 
pumped back (recovered) to the surface and sent to a processing plant, 
where ion exchange is used to separate the uranium from the solution. 
The ISR process also frees other metals and minerals from the host 
aquifer. As a result, operators of ISR facilities are required to 
restore the groundwater affected by operations. In the processing 
plant, the recovered uranium is concentrated into the product known as 
``yellowcake.'' For the Lost Creek ISR project, the final product is a 
yellowcake ``slurry'', not dry yellowcake. The slurry from the Lost

[[Page 65806]]

Creek ISR Facility would be shipped to an intermediate uranium 
processing facility, before being sent to a uranium fuel conversion 
facility.
    In this draft SEIS, the NRC staff has assessed the potential 
environmental impacts from the construction, operation, aquifer 
restoration, and decommissioning of the proposed Lost Creek ISR 
Project. In doing so, the NRC staff evaluated site-specific data and 
information from the Lost Creek ISR Project to determine if the LCI's 
proposed activities and the site characteristics were consistent with 
those evaluated in the GEIS. NRC then determined which relevant 
sections of, and impact conclusions in, the GEIS could be incorporated 
by reference. The NRC staff also determined if additional data or 
analysis was needed to assess the potential environmental impacts for a 
specific environmental resource area. The NRC staff documented its 
assessments and conclusions in the draft SEIS.
    In addition to the action proposed by LCI, the NRC staff addressed 
the no-action alternative in the draft SEIS. Under this alternative, 
NRC would deny LCI's request to construct and operate an ISR facility 
at the Lost Creek ISR Project. The no-action alternative serves as a 
baseline for comparison of the potential environmental impacts.
    Another alternative action considered in the draft SEIS was the 
addition of a yellowcake dryer in the central processing plant. This 
would process the slurry into a dry yellowcake, thereby eliminating the 
necessity of transporting the slurry to another facility for drying. 
The end result would be direct transport of the dry yellowcake to a 
uranium fuel processing facility.
    The NRC staff also considered other alternatives but eliminated 
them from detailed analysis. Conventional mining/milling and 
conventional mining/heap leach processing are two potential methods of 
uranium recovery at the Lost Creek ISR Project. However, given the 
recognized more substantial environmental impacts of conventional 
mining (whether by open pit or underground techniques) and conventional 
milling or heap leach processing, these alternatives were not further 
considered. The NRC staff also evaluated alternative lixiviants (acid- 
and ammonia-based), alternative waste disposal methods, and alternative 
site locations within the proposed license area. For reasons discussed 
in the draft SEIS, these alternatives also were eliminated from further 
consideration.
    This draft SEIS is being issued for public comment. The public 
comment period on the draft SEIS begins with publication of this notice 
and continues until February 1, 2010. Written comments should be 
submitted as described in the ADDRESSES section of this notice. The NRC 
will consider comments received or postmarked after that date to the 
extent practical.

    Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 4th day of December, 2009.

    For the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Patrice M. Bubar,
Deputy Director, Environmental Protection and Performance Assessment 
Directorate, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, 
Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management 
Programs.
[FR Doc. E9-29547 Filed 12-10-09; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P