A 71-hectare, radioactive waste disposal area 6 miles north of the city of the rifle, which contained uranium mill components and mill fluctuations from two locations of uranium and vanadium mills, was fully remedied by the US Ministry of Legacy Management.
The site was built in 1996 to permanently sequestring radioactive contaminants and equipment of two million from 1924 to 1958, which were located next to the Colorado River and the city of the rifle. The mills processed uranium and vanadium. Vanadium is a metal used to strengthen steel. The uranium, which was reduced in Colorado, was used for the war efforts during the Second World War and after the war core reactors. The location was flooded in the containment cell by water in 2021.
The waste disposal site has met with a multi -layered system that stored water and heavy riprap to prevent erosion. According to the publication, the cap is designed for 1,000 years.
It is unclear whether the contaminated material is located directly on the underlying Wasatch.
The disposal cell should dry out and a evaporation pond was built to do short -term drainage. But Doe officers said the water never stopped seeping up and rising in the cell to threaten their integrity. Therefore, the agency carried out a program with a drill well, the infiltration pumps out and sends it to a larger set of evaporation ponds below the disposal cell.
The agency still examines why and how infiltration penetrates the cell.
“When we found that our existing infrastructure did not keep up with the rising water level, the first approach was to examine the change in operating parameters to maximize the pump rate,” said team manager Paul Kerl in the publication. “We have renovated existing fountains and freezing the existing infrastructure to maximize the term and all year round, but unfortunately this was not sufficient. When the water level continued, we were assessed the risks associated with the saturation of the disposal cell to implement a priority project.
Team hydrologists created a water flow model and used lidar measurements to locate new wells to avoid drilling into buried devices.
“To simulate how the water level in the cell would change by pumping, we have developed a numerical groundwater flow model,” said Pete Schillig, Senior Hydrogeologist from LMSP. “Historically, what we knew about the cell came from three locations: the two points of view at 30 years of water level recordings and one dry. That didn't give us much information to calibrate a single groundwater flow model.”
The plan added 10 additional extraction fountains and actively pulled a total of 12 fountains from the cell. According to the release, another four surveillance fountain were drilled to measure the water level in the cell. The new pump system required the installation of a solar panel to supply the pumps and surveillance systems with electricity.
The additional water removal also meant more evaporation capacity.
“The location was originally built with a small evaporation pond, but we had to install two additional hectare of a hectare modular evaporation area to support the volume of the pore water, which is to be extracted from the cell,” said Mary Young, LM location manager Mary Young.
The agency said that the work at the location is complete and that the wells work as expected and extract water as expected to maintain cell integrity. The location monitoring using data that has been recorded and transferred from a distance and adhering to the long -term surveillance plan will continue to protect human health and the environment.