Teledyne Wah Chang

• Over 200 workers at the Teledyne Wah Chang site have suffered from cancers, costing taxpayers over $30 million in compensation and medical bills.

• In 1989, the state of Utah fought the shipment of radioactive waste from Teledyne Wah Chang to the White Mesa Mill as a sham, arguing that that the mill couldn’t make a profit from processing it, but was instead charging a fee to dispose of it and de facto operating as a low-level radioactive-waste dump.

• When the state of Utah lost its case in 1992, it opened the floodgates for radioactive waste from contaminated sites around the country to begin flowing to the mill.

Beginning in the 1980s, when the White Mesa Mill’s owner first sought to make a profit by processing wastes containing uranium as “alternate feeds,” the state of Utah  objected . Under federal law, the only wastes that can be discarded at a uranium mill are those that come from milling ore  primarily  to extract uranium. That requirement, the state  argued , wasn’t satisfied when the principal reason for processing an alternate feed was not to extract uranium, but to allow for disposal of the resulting waste at the mill in exchange for a fee. What the mill’s owner was doing when it charged those fees, according to the state, was “ sham disposal .”  

And so the year 1989 marked the beginning of a decade-long battle between the state of Utah and the owner of the White Mesa Mill over the legality of charging fees to discard shipments of radioactive waste at the mill.

The fight began over the Teledyne Wah Chang waste, a radioactive sludge generated at a former zirconium production plant located in the rolling, fertile Willamette River Valley of Millersburg, Oregon, between Eugene and Portland. 

In the  1940s and 1950s , the U.S. Bureau of Mines began piloting zirconium production at facilities just outside Millersburg. 

 Zirconium , a grayish-white lustrous metal, is predominantly used in the nuclear energy industry, including in the cladding that protects nuclear fuel rods. 

Originally, the Bureau of Mines experimentally  produced  zirconium and other metals for defense and nuclear-technology research. Responding to the needs of the Naval Nuclear Power Program, in 1956, the Atomic Energy Commission  contracted  with the Wah Chang Corporation to run the Bureau of Mines’ zirconium plant and to develop high-purity zirconium for the Navy.

In 1967, Teledyne, Inc.  purchased  the Wah Chang Corporation facilities, changed its name to “Teledyne Wah Chang Albany,” and quickly grew the acquisition to become the  world's largest production facility  for zirconium and other rare earth metals. These other rare earth metals are  often found  in ore that contains naturally occurring radioactive materials such as uranium, thorium, and radium.  

Alongside its zirconium and rare earth metal production, Teledyne Wah Chang also took a  contract  with the Union Carbide Corporation to melt 50,000 pounds of depleted uranium in 1971 and 1972. The depleted uranium processing and the buildup of thorium, uranium, and radium resulted in  significant contamination  at the Teledyne Wah Chang facility. A few decades later, this waste would be sent to the White Mesa Mill, but first it had damage to do in Millersburg.  

Exposure to the radioactivity and radioactive waste at the Teledyne Wah Chang site took a toll on its workers and the surrounding rivers, lands, and air. Since 2011, under a  program  that compensates people who suffered from cancer that likely resulted from their work on federal nuclear programs, the federal government has  paid  $29.8 million in compensation and $1.8 million in medical bills to former Teledyne Wah Chang workers or their survivors.  

Teledyne Wah Chang also mismanaged the toxic and radioactive waste that had built up on its site. The company deposited thousands of yards of toxic solids and sludge in  unlined ponds  in the Willamette River floodplain.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state of Oregon grew  increasingly concerned  that hazardous materials from these unlined ponds would migrate to soil, surface water, and groundwater, as well as posing a threat to the Willamette River itself. 

As a result, in 1982, the Environmental Protection Agency placed Teledyne Wah Chang on the  National Priorities List  — a list of contaminated sites across the country that pose the greatest threat to public health and the environment — and  formally listed  it as a Superfund site in 1983.  

The  V-2 Pond  was one of the many ponds on the Teledyne Wah Chang property. This dumpsite operated from 1960 to 1979 and  contained  radioactive materials. By 1989, the company had transferred the contents of the V-2 pond — millions of pounds of radioactive waste with uranium content ranging from  0.143 percent to 0.37 percent  — to cement pads in the ore storage area. 

The White Mesa Mill entered the picture when Teledyne Wah Chang shipped 600 tons (1.2 million pounds) of V-2 pond waste to the mill for “ testing .” After the waste arrived, the mill’s owner  submitted  an application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to accept and process the Teledyne Wah Chang waste.  

Even before the mill’s owner filed the application, the state of Utah had  expressed concerns  to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the emerging practice of companies paying the mill to dispose of contaminated waste in the mill’s waste pits. The state of Utah’s primary concern was that the mill was not pursuing the waste in order to extract uranium, but rather for  the fees  that accompanied waste disposal.  The director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control at the time  told  a local journalist:

From 1989 to 1992, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission  grappled  with what to do about the state of Utah’s concerns and the mill’s pending license application. Meanwhile, the  600 tons  (1.2 million pounds) of Teledyne Wah Chang waste sat on the White Mesa Mill property, pending approval to begin processing. The situation prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue  staff guidance  on when and how applications for uranium mills to process materials other than uranium ore should be approved. Applying this guidance to the Teledyne Wah Chang waste, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ultimately approved the license amendment in 1992, over the state of  Utah’s objections .  

In response, Utah  requested a hearing  before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, making several arguments.  

• First, the state questioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to broaden the definition of “uranium ore” to include non-ore bodies, such as the waste from the V-2 Pond. Utah  argued  that the new definition unreasonably broadened the class of materials considered "ore,” specifically undercutting laws intended to regulate facilities processing uranium ore.   

• Second, it challenged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s reliance on signed “certifications” from the mill owner to establish that the primary purpose in accepting waste was to extract uranium.

The state of Utah  argued  that, in cases where the mill was being paid to accept the waste, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had an obligation to look at the financials and make sure that the mill’s profit from the deal came from the extracted uranium, not the disposal fee. To this end, the state  submitted evidence  to make the case “that it may have benefitted TWCA [Teledyne Wah Chang Albany] financially to compensate UMETCO [the owner of the White Mesa Mill at the time] to receive the material rather than having to pay higher disposal costs for it as mixed or low level radioactive waste.”  

In April 1993, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission administrative law judge  ruled  against the state of Utah, permitting the processing of the Teledyne Wah Chang waste.But the waste  appears  to have been ultimately sent back to Oregon without being processed.

Losing the Teledyne Wah Chang case opened the floodgates; in the years following the legal decision,  many more  contaminated sites across the United States would ship their radioactive waste to the White Mesa Mill, relying on the legal precedent and policy guidance established as a result of the controversy surrounding the Teledyne Wah Chang waste. 

And while the state of Utah has since changed its tune, allowing the White Mesa Mill to accept toxic and radioactive waste without contest, the concern remains that the mill is accepting wastes not for their uranium content, but for the processing fees it receives to dispose of the leftovers in its waste pits.