§7912 Processing Site Designations

Summary

The Secretary must, no later than one year after November 8, 1978, name processing locations at or near 22 listed places (for example Salt Lake City, Grand Junction, Shiprock, Ambrosia Lake, Lakeview, and Cannonsburg) and finish cleanup at those places before his authority under this law ends. The Secretary must also, within that same year, identify any other U.S. processing sites that need cleanup to carry out the law’s purpose. In doing this, the Secretary must talk with the Administrator, the Commission, the affected States, and, for Indian lands, the tribe and the Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary and the Commission must decide the boundaries for each site. Sites covered by Public Law 92–314 in Grand Junction cannot be added as processing locations here. Within one year from November 8, 1978, the Secretary must assess public health risk from leftover radioactive materials and set cleanup priorities, relying mainly on the Administrator’s advice. The Secretary must tell each affected Governor, and the tribes or the Secretary of the Interior when appropriate, within 30 days after the site choices and priorities are made. Those choices and priorities are final and cannot be reviewed by a court. The law also requires including certain nearby properties named in section 7911(6)(B) when practical, and allows adding them later if needed. Any contaminated property near the TVA mill in Edgemont, South Dakota, must be treated as a processing site, with January 4, 1983, used for timing and crediting the State for prior cleanup spending. The Moab uranium milling site, about three miles northwest of Moab, Utah, identified in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Final Environmental Impact Statement from March 1996 (Source Materials License No. SUA–917), is designated a processing site. The subchapter applies to Moab like other sites except that sections 7913, 7914(b), 7917(a), 7922(a), and 7925(a) do not apply, and references to November 8, 1978, are treated as October 30, 2000. If money is available, the Secretary must clean up Moab safely and follow the remedial plan called for by section 3405(i) of Public Law 105–261, including restoring groundwater and moving contaminated material to a permanent site in Utah with any needed stabilization.