A batch of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) will complete its journey to disposal by truck after a fire near Chicago earlier this month on a railcar being used to transport it to Texas.
“The transloaded waste is being re-profiled to be shipped by truck,” a spokesperson for Veolia subsidiary Alaron Nuclear Services, which generated the material, said by email Friday. “We are working with various commercial waste disposal sites as to the best option for disposal.”
Additional information was not immediately available at deadline Monday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. That included whether some or all of the LLRW would still be heading toward its original destination: Waste Control Specialists’ disposal complex in Andrews County, Texas.
The Dallas-based company said Monday morning it could not comment. Waste Control Specialists operates one of four licensed commercial facilities for disposal of low-level radioactive waste. EnergySolutions has two, at Clive, Utah, and Barnwell, S.C., while US Ecology operates the fourth at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
Early on June 4, emergency officials responded to a railcar fire at a train switching facility in Bedford Park, Ill., about 20 miles outside of Chicago. The fire burned about 10% of the railcar before extinguishing itself after a few hours. No radioactive contamination is believed to have escaped into the environment.
The transport load was comprised of roughly 138,000 pounds of contaminated dry-activity waste and metal debris such as tubes and motors, specifically designated as low-specific activity waste, generated by recycling operations by Alaron Nuclear Services in Pennsylvania. A second railcar carrying another load of waste did not burn.
The blaze is believed to have been ignited by a reaction between pyrophoric zirconium dust generated by friction during transport and nearby contaminated building debris and other “combustible waste,” according to a report from the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.
