About $190 million worth of work remains at the Department of Energy’s Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project at Moab, Utah, bringing the final tab to about $1.16 billion, a congressional watchdog said earlier this month.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a July 15 report the Moab cleanup has already cost $970 million as of fiscal 2025.
Remaining tasks include removing any leftover tailings from the Moab site near the Colorado River to an engineered landfill 30 miles away in Crescent Junction, Utah. The check list also includes remediation of contaminated groundwater and transferring responsibility for the site from DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to the Office of Legacy Management.
Ownership of the cleaned-up mill site is expected to eventually be transferred to Grand County, Utah, which has a plan for potential recreational uses of the property, according to GAO.
North Wind has a 10-year, $614-million contract that runs through February 2032 to finish remediation at the site, according to a DOE contract summary.
North Wind and predecessor companies have led the Office of Environmental Management’s Moab cleanup efforts for years and have successfully removed more than 16 million tons of tailings from the site. Remaining tasks could be completed by 2029, according to GAO.
The Moab site encompasses about 480 acres with about 130 acres initially taken up by a uranium mill tailings pile, according to a DOE history of the site.
The Moab site near the Colorado River started out as a private mill to process uranium ore. The resulting uranium concentrate was then sold to the Atomic Energy Commission, a predecessor to DOE.
After 1970, however, the market for the uranium product shifted largely from defense to domestic nuclear energy generation, according to GAO. The mill would shut down in 1984, with the owner going bankrupt in 2000, GAO said in the report.
“Congress directed DOE to remediate the site in accordance with Title I of the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978, as amended (UMTRCA),” GAO reported. “The federal government pays 100 percent of the cleanup costs.”
Under the act, the site is regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.