About 18 months after the Department of Energy put up for sale 52 old railcars used to ship contaminated soil, Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions bought the equipment for $350,000.
The 100-ton railcars, now located at Savannah River Site in South Carolina, were used in cleanup both there and at DOE’s Fernald Closure Project outside Cincinnati, Ohio. The deal was announced in a Tuesday press release from DOE, which estimates the equipment should still have a 20-year service life remaining.
EnergySolutions, a provider of backend nuclear services to both the government and commercial clients, bought the railcars through a competitive bid process and money from the sale was deposited to the U.S. Treasury, DOE said. In October 2019, DOE started looking for potential purchasers of the 52 gondola-style railcars.
EnergySolutions previously used the same railcars to move about 1.5-million tons of low-level radioactive waste in the form of uranium-contaminated soil from Fernald to the company’s disposal facility in Clive, Utah. Fernald served as a uranium processing facility for the U.S. military until it closed in 1989. The DOE finished remediation of the site in 2006.
DOE said in October the railcars were on sale as-is and could use minor refurbishment. Fluor-led operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions was directed by DOE to ensure the railcars comply with U.S. Department of Transportation standards although the equipment was not fully decontaminated.
