The Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project has completed remedial action at 22 uranium mill tailings sites and about 5,000 properties ("vicinity properties") where tailings were used in construction, at a total cost of $1.45 billion. This paper uses existing data from Environmental Impact Statements and Environmental Assessments, and vicinity property calculations, to determine the total number of cancer deaths averted by the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project. The cost-effectiveness of remediating each site, the vicinity properties, and the entire project is calculated. The cost per cancer death averted was four orders of magnitude higher at the least cost-effective site than at the most cost-effective site.
The nonuniform distribution of 226Ra and other radiological contamination of cobbly soil encountered on several Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project sites is presented and discussed, and the concomitant challenges to the intent and implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's soil cleanup standards are noted. In response to technical assessments and information presented to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recently resolved the dilemma by concluding that compliance with Environmental Protection Agency soil cleanup standards for cobby soil at Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project sites would be adequately attained using bulk radionuclide concentrations, instead of requiring that the radionuclide concentration of the finer soil fraction passing a #4 mesh sieve met the standards. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved procedure developed for cobbly soil remediation is outlined and discussed. The site-specific implementation of this procedure at Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project sites containing cobbly soil is estimated to save millions of dollars.
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