A contractor for the Department of Energy has removed 13.4 million tons at the Moab uranium tailings site in Utah and transported the debris to a disposal facility near Crescent Junction, a local advisory panel heard recently.

“Approximately 96,991 tons of tailings and mill debris were moved in March 2023,” Jessica Thacker, a liaison for the Uranium Remedial Action Project, told the local steering committee in Grand County, Utah, on April 25. Altogether 83.7% of the estimated 16 million total tons of tailings and debris has been removed since the beginning of the project, Thacker said in a presentation to the steering committee posted online.

Contractor North Wind Portage continues to transport four four trainloads per week on a regular basis, Thacker said. Essentially, the project involves “the moving of dirt to-and-fro.” A recording of the meeting is also available online. 

In late 2020, DOE and Union Pacific Railroad increased the total capacity to 600 containers of tailings weekly, up from 576. 

Cleanup of the old Atlas Mineral Corp. uranium ore processing site, near the junction of the Moab Wash and the Colorado River, is entering the final stages, supervisors with the DOE Office of Environmental Management told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June.

Thacker works as a liaison and technical inspector for Grand County and is charged with providing independent observations and reports on the Moab mill tailings removal site and associated Crescent Junction Disposal Site, located about 30 miles to the north.

DOE’s 2022 Strategic Vision for Moab anticipates about a million tons of tailings removal annually, with an eye toward relocation and disposal of the 480-acre tailings pile by 2029. In March 2022, incumbent North Wind Portage received DOE’s approval to start transition to its new contract, potentially worth $164 million over 10 years.