California-based waste water management firm Kurion Inc. said Monday that it had been awarded a contract to treat radioactive water at the Cimarron fuel fabrication facility in Guthrie, Oklahoma, which could open a door for potential company growth.
Kurion, which has designed mobile water treatment tanks to remove strontium from contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, said he contract in Oklahoma represents a potential business boom, given the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will regulate the Cimarron cleanup, is responsible for overseeing the decommissioning of 101 sites around the country.
The Cimarron contract was awarded by the Environmental Properties Management LLC, which is the Trustee for the Cimarron Environmental Response Trust, which owns the site. Both the NRC and the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality are beneficiaries of the trust and will jointly oversee the cleanup.
The Kurion water contaminant removal system will be integrated with hydrogeological design services provided by power industry engineering giant Burns & McDonnell and will remove enriched uranium and nitrates from groundwater as a part of final decontamination, decommissioning and remediation of the former Kerr-McGee nuclear fuel facility.
The Cimarron site covers approximately 700 acres, which is divided into several subareas for evaluation and treatment. Contamination is present in shallow groundwater in several portions of the site, totaling approximately 200 acres. To remove the contaminants, multiple extraction wells will pump groundwater from shallow soil and bedrock. The water will then be piped to one of two separate water treatment systems. One treatment system will remove uranium and will treat water at a flow rate ranging from 100-150 gallons per minute, and a second system will treat water for the removal of uranium and nitrates at a rate of 400-500 gallons per minute. Uranium will be removed through ion exchange using Kurion’s skid-mounted systems. Nitrates will be removed through a proprietary bio-remediation process.
Kurion is performing tests for this project to determine the best ion exchange material for the removal of uranium and nitrates. Upon successful completion of these tests and the necessary regulatory reviews and approvals, Kurion anticipates it will begin final design and fabrication. Kurion may also participate in the operation of the systems. It estimates a 10-year operating schedule once the system is in place at the Cimarron site.
Kurion said the project was a logical extension of its work in Japan. Kurion has designed and built two mobile water treatment tanks for Fukushima that employ the company’s Ion Specific Media to remove radioactive strontium from water stored in on-site tanks. These skid-based systems have removed more than 99.9 percent of the strontium from the processed water, surpassing decontamination targets.
In a statement released Monday, Kurion touted the advantages of a modular system. The fabrication and testing of the system will take place at the existing facilities, which reduces the time and cost of construction. However, testing can be performed prior to delivery, out of harm’s way, should the cleanup site include dangerous conditions. Modular systems also allow for quicker, safer replacement of system parts that fail.