Corps of Engineers outlines plans to dismantle SM-1A, clean up site on Fort Greely over next five years
After years of site surveys and analysis, the Army Corps of Engineers is preparing to begin dismantling a long-mothballed nuclear power plant at Fort Greely this summer.
The facility’s reactor was removed and shipped Outside 50 years ago, but the structure itself and other hazardous components and materials at the site need to be removed and disposed of. Now, the Corps is beginning a five-year process for removal what’s remains of Fort Greely’s Cold War-era SM-1A nuclear power plant.
“The first two large tasks that we’re going to do is build our weather enclosure at the site, which will allow for year-round work for our crew,” says Brenda Barber, program manager for the $95.5 million project. She says that may allow the Corps and its contractor to catch up on work that was delayed for about a year due to a protest over the award of the contract.
In addition to the all-weather enclosure, Barber added, "we’re going to actually build a waste-storage area as well.”
The storage facility will be built on Fort Greely about a half-mile from the SM-1A site. Barber says the containerized waste material will be kept there until the Corps begins shipping it next year to a facility in Texas.
She says initially most of that will be construction waste contaminated with substances that were commonly used when the plant was built in the 1950s. “Asbestos, lead-based paint, universal waste … Because those increase our exposure – more so than the radioactivity.”
Barber says the Corps last year studied the feasibility of disposing of those more-conventional kinds of wastes in a local landfill operated by the City of Delta Junction. But she told city officials the Corps declined that proposal due to stringent state and federal regulatory hurdles.
“We expressed to them what the process would entail,” she said. “It is a lengthy process.”
Barber reiterated that point Monday when she was asked about waste disposal during a meeting in Delta the Corps scheduled to talk about the next phase of the demolition project.
One of the 25 or so residents who attended Monday's meeting asked: “Non-regulated, radioactive waste – are we talking construction waste?”
Barber replied: “Construction waste, RCRA waste, PCB waste. … Everything at this point will be transported out of the state of Alaska. We don’t intend to leave anything behind.”
RCRA waste is substances regulated by the federal 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. PCB waste is substances containing polychlorinated biphenyls, highly carcinogenic chemical compounds formerly used in many industrial applications.
Delta Mayor J.W. Musgrove, who sat in on the meeting, welcomed Barber's assurances.
“I think it alleviates the concerns of a lot of people that something contaminated could slip by,” he said.
Barber said Corps will protect workers from exposure to harmful levels of radiation throughout the project, and will maintain precautions to ensure the public isn’t exposed to radiation.
The project contractor, Louisiana-based Aptim-Amentum Alaska Decommissioning, will send out an average of two truckloads of the waste material weekly, beginning next year. She said the Corps will try to schedule the deliveries to avoid aggravating the Richardson Highway’s already heavy truck traffic that now includes multiple double-trailer loads of gold ore running daily from the Manh Choh Mine near Tetlin headed to the Kinross mill north of Fairbanks.
“We really do understand there are some concerns with the Kinross mine,” she said in an interview before the meeting. “I hope to coordinate with them on dispersing our traffic load with their traffic load.”
Barber said the team also learned the importance of coordinating with the 11th Airborne Division last month after her team encountered a long convoy of military vehicles and equipment moving slowly down the Richardson to training ranges around Fort Greely.
“Yeah, we were here at the height of that military exercise, so we definitely saw what you guys were experiencing,” she said. “We experienced it ourselves.”
Once the truckloads of waste loaded into Conex-type containers get to Fairbanks, they’ll be loaded onto Alaska Railroad cars and transported to either Anchorage or Whittier. Then they’ll be barged to Seattle and offloaded onto railcars and taken to a nuclear waste storage facility in Texas.
Seattle-based Lynden Transport will manage most of the trucking and barging operations.
Barber says the Corps will be holding more public meetings before the trucking begins and throughout the project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2029.
Editor’s note: This story has been revised to correct the number of trucks that will be hauling waste materials out of the SM-1A cleanup. Beginning next year, an average of two loads per week will be traveling from Fort Greely to Fairbanks.
