Low-level radioactive waste that was being carried in a railcar that caught fire in June near Chicago is now being transported by truck to Tennessee, according to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA).
Transport of 42 intermodal containers started last week and is expected to wrap up this week, IEMA spokeswoman Rebecca Clark said by email Monday. The material is going to Oak Ridge, Tenn., but Clark did not further specify the destination.
A spokesman for Veolia subsidiary Alaron Nuclear Services, which generated the waste, did not respond to a query by deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor.
Oak Ridge is home to a large Department of Energy complex, which encompasses the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex. But Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management spokesman Ben Williams said the facility would not take commercial waste.
Nuclear services firm EnergySolutions operates a facility near Oak Ridge for processing and packaging radioactive materials. It separately has two low-level waste disposal sites, at Barnwell, S.C., and Clive, Utah. The company did not respond by deadline Friday to a query.
Perma-Fix Environmental Services also has a radioactive waste treatment plant in nearby Kingston, Tenn. “This is not something we’d be in a position to comment on,” spokesman David Waldman said by email Tuesday.
The waste was originally being carried by train from Pennsylvania to Waste Control Specialists’ low-level waste disposal facility in Andrews County, Texas. It encompassed about 138,000 pounds of contaminated dry-activity waste and metal debris, including tubes and motors, from Alaron recycling operation in Pennsylvania.
The railcar was found burning in the early hours of June 4 at a train switching facility in Bedford Park, Ill., roughly 20 miles outside of Chicago. About 10% of the railcar burned before the fire burned itself out, and no radioactive contamination is believed to have escaped, according to an IEMA report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
A second railcar also carrying waste from Alaron was not damaged.
The Federal Railroad Administration is investigating the incident. There was no update this week on the status of the probe.
“The material was removed from the railcar and packaged with sand to mitigate any further fire hazard,” Clark wrote. The 42 intermodal containers were all inspected by the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
