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	NRC NEWS U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
	Office of Public Affairs	Telephone: 301/415-8200
	Washington, DC 20555-001	E-mail: opa@nrc.gov

No. 98-25

Thursday, February 12, 1998

NRC NOTIFIES B&W OF ACTIONS NEEDED FOR PENNSYLVANIA BURIAL SITE

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has notified B&W Environmental Services, Inc., that the company must submit a license amendment request before NRC will resume work on a draft environmental impact statement for the planned decommissioning of the Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) Shallow Land Disposal Area in Parks Township, Pennsylvania.

NRC said in a letter to B&W that it does not plan to conduct further analysis on the draft statement until B&W submits the document asking NRC to authorize decommissioning.

Once it receives the license amendment request, NRC will issue an announcement and will give the public an opportunity to request a hearing. In addition, NRC will hold appropriate public meetings with local officials and community members to discuss matters concerning the site.

The Parks Township site was used from 1961 until 1970 for disposal of wastes from a nuclear fuel fabrication facility in nearby Apollo, Pennsylvania. (Such disposal was permitted by Federal regulations in effect at the time.) Radioactive materials buried in trenches on site include natural uranium, enriched and depleted uranium, and lesser quantities of thorium, americium and plutonium.

B&W previously proposed a decommissioning approach that involved stabilizing the wastes on site by installing an engineered cover and hydrologic barrier systems surrounding the trenches in which radioactive materials are currently buried.

In September the NRC published for public comment its draft environmental statement on this proposal. It reached a preliminary conclusion that modified stabilization in place, an NRC-developed alternative, would protect public health and the environment at less cost than other alternatives.

The NRC withdrew its draft statement in September. In the letter sent to the company today concerning the need for a license amendment request, the NRC staff said its draft environmental report was withdrawn because the alternative identified by the NRC staff was not presented in the same format and level of detail as the other alternatives; because identification of this alternative was inconsistent with NRC policy that preferred alternatives must be clearly environmentally superior, not merely economically superior; and because the staff needed to review how the agency's new license termination criteria regulation, issued in July, applies to sites such as B&W Parks Township, where licensees are considering restricted release of the site.