Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
6/6/2014
As the Moab uranium mill tailings remediation project in Utah continues progress on shipments, the Department of Energy is wrapping up contract modifications for a new year-round work schedule for contractor Portage. When Portage took over the contract in 2012 an annual three-month work curtailment was planned due to funding constraints, but a budget boost last year allowed the project to shift to a 11.5 month work schedule with time off around the winter holidays where maintenance is performed. While harsh winter weather last year delayed some planned work, when compared to original lifecycle plans, “we are below cost, we are ahead of schedule,” Moab Federal Project Director Don Metzler told WC Monitor in an interview in late May.
Contract modifications should be complete this month and will focus on finalizing the new year-round schedule, Metzler said. “In addition, with those monies and those plus up we are going to do some final cover work, some interim cover work and then some of the maintenance activities that are in the baseline,” he said. “Because in the last few years we’ve actually moved more tailings than we originally thought we were going to do, we want to make sure that we are doing all of the maintenance that is commensurate with the hours on the equipment, or say the miles on the pavement.”
Winter Weather Delayed Shipments
The project involves the removal by train of a total of approximately 16 million tons of uranium mill tailings from a former uranium-ore processing facility near Moab, Utah, on the west bank of the Colorado River to a disposal site approximately 30 miles away. But during spells of cold weather last winter the site did not always ship a full train of 136 containers of tailings. The site shipped between 10,000 tons and 19,000 tons less than expected over the winter, Metzler said. “I can’t go into detail because that’s all part of the contract mod. But we know it’s in that range and we feel that if we stay on track for the remainder of the year without any interruptions we are going to be just a little over 900,000 tons,” he said.
The site hasn’t yet been able to recover that schedule, but given that it is not slated for closure until 2025 it is not a great concern. “There still is opportunity this fiscal year, but to be honest with you it’s not the highest priority,” Metzler said. “The highest priority is just to conduct work safely and make sure we are listening to the workforce and any types of observations, any concerns they have. So we really want to keep our focus on that and keep our priorities on that. If other opportunities would make themselves available we could catch up that schedule, then we would look towards that.”
In DOE’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, Moab saw a slight decrease of about $2.1 million from the current funding level of $38 million. However, the site should still be able to undertake the year-round work schedule. “That covers really just operations. There are other activities too, so we have to ultimately make sure that we are accounting for all of those other activities also,” Metzler said.
Pile Estimate Amount Stays Steady
So far Moab has shipped about 6.8 million tons since the project began, about 43 percent of the total. As the pile of tailings shrinks, the site has recently used orthophotography and other techniques to verify the original total estimate of 16 million tons “to make sure we don’t get fooled and then at the end find out cost and schedule changes because of volume growth,” Metzler said. “It’s easier to characterize if you don’t have to drill through 90 feet. We think our 16 million is really holding strong, but that’s not a guarantee that it won’t change,” he said. “To be able to see our 16 million is still standing as a relatively accurate estimate, that’s a pretty good feeling.”
‘Let’s Not be Complacent’
As the project keeps moving along, Metzler said that a main goal is keeping the focus on safety. “Coming with an operating project is a lot of routine activities. And routine activities where there’s not a lot of change, there’s always this slide towards possible complacency, actually standing so close to something that you see every day that then doesn’t become obvious when there could be a potential hazard,” he said. “We really are emphasizing ‘Let’s not be complacent, we’re almost halfway through.’ We have a good safety record but we know that with complacency that could easily erode. So I think the workforce and the managers, everyone on the team is really uniting toward we really need to understand what could happen if complacency seeped into the organization. Everyone is taking that seriously and it’s a real positive, but we don’t ever want to let up.”
