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FERNALD

Operable Units

Operable Unit 1 (OU-1)

This area, located west of the production area, contained 569,000 cubic yards of solid and sludge waste and consists of six lined waste storage pits, a burn pit, and a clear well. Large quantities of liquid and solid wastes were generated by various FEMP operations. Solid and slurried wastes from FEMP processes were disposed of in this on-property waste storage area. The basic approach to the remediation of OU-1, per the Record of Decision, was to excavate contaminated waste materials and soils, to dewater, and to transport treated materials in an offsite disposal facility. Once the contaminated materials were removed from the pit area, the pit area was to be backfilled with clean soil, regraded, and vegetated to prevent pending and future erosion problems or as the grading plan decides.

Operable Unit 2 (OU-2)

During site production, primarily solid wastes were placed in on-property disposal facilities.

These facilities included the solid waste landfill, lime sludge ponds, fly ash disposal areas, and the south field area, a landfill for demolition debris between and adjacent to the fly ash areas. The unlined north lime sludge pond was 90 percent full and contained 5,500 cubic yards of sludge from the water treatment operations, boiler plant blowdown, and coal pile storm water runoff.

Operable Unit 3 (OU-3)

The production of uranium metal involved a series of chemical and metallurgical con versions in nine specialized plants that collectively comprised OU-3. OU-3 included the production area, production-related struc tures, equipment, utilities, drums, tanks, solid waste, waste product, thorium effluent lines, K-65 silo transfer line, waste water treatment facilities, fire training facilities, scrap metal pile, feed stocks, product, and the coal pile. Contaminated ground water (referred to as perched water), contaminated soil, and a variety of debris piles were included in OU-3. Dismantling of the contaminated structures was expected to produce an estimated 270,000 cubic yards of contaminated construction debris.

Building 65 was a warehouse within OU-3 that was used to store approximately 5,600 drums of thorium materials, which were placed in the warehouse during the 1960s as part of the site's former mission as the repository of thorium materials for the U.S. government. The drums deteriorated to the point that some material has been released in the building.

Operable Unit 4 (OU-4)

The four large concrete waste storage silos comprising OU-4 were among the first structures constructed at the site. Silos 1 and 2 contained 15,000 cubic yards of high-specific-activity radium-bearing residues resulting from pitchblende refining. There was not enough fissile material in the silos to present a nuclear criticality hazard. The third silo contained metal oxide low-level radioactive dry wastes. The fourth silo was empty because it was never used.

A Vitrification Pilot Plant with a one ton per day (tpd) capacity was operational. It was used to generate engineering data for the full-scale (15 tpd) vitrification facility. Construction of the Vitrification Pilot Plant was scheduled to be finished in August 1995, with operations to begin in 1996; however, the facility fell 26 months behind schedule. Campaign 2 of Phase I operations started August 27, 1996, with a scheduled completion date of September 30, 1996. The vitrified output was to be packaged and transported to an offsite disposal facility.

The construction of an onsite waste disposal facility was budgeted to begin in 1997, with completion, through the capping of the cell scheduled for 2005.