Some 10K Tons Of Radioactive Material Coming To Montco

ROYERSFORD, PA — Despite the efforts of activists, a Royersford business' request to process 10,000 tons of radioactive material from Canada at its U.S. plants has been approved.

UniTech, a nuclear services company which has a branch on 401 North Third Avenue, says that their primary work involves the leasing, laundering, and recycling of protective wear used by employees in nuclear facilities around the country. The waste will be processed at several plants, including Royersford, Morris, Illinois, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

UniTech had requested a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to import the radioactive material, and another license to export the waste - whatever could not be recycled or reused - back to Canada.

According to a petition filed with the NRC against the granting of the export license, the materials include "tools, metals, other solid materials, along with increments of special nuclear material." The nature of the "increments" was not specified.

The license request had faced resistance from environmentalists, who wanted more details on the materials that would be brought to Montgomery County.

"(The request) does not adequately define or characterize the waste materials...in such a way as to allow measurement, calculation, or prediction of types and amount of radioactivity or the volume or the chemical and physical (nature) of the radioactive waste," the petition argues.

Activist organizations chose to challenge the export license specifically, demanding in their petition that the matter of the license be determined in a public hearing.

In a recently issued response, the NRC said that a Commission "appointed by the President" which oversees the NRC ruled in favor of UniTech. The Commission claimed that the hearing request did not "explain why a hearing or an intervention would be in the public interest," according to a statement issued by the NRC.

Several other concerns with the waste were cited in the petition, including the dangers of transporting the materials, spills and runoff due to highway accidents, contamination of the local water supply due to spills at the recycling site, environmental damage to the nearby Schuylkill River, and "the potential that radioactive materials recycled by UniTech are used in consumer products and other metal uses in civic life."

The precise origin of the nuclear waste - and the details of when it will arrive in Royersford and how long it will be here for - were not made publicly available.

Organizations that filed the petition included Nuclear Information and Resource Services (on behalf of a Pottstown resident), Beyond Nuclear, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Nuclear Energy Information Service, and the Tennessee Environmental Council.

The export license was formally granted by the NRC on April 30. It expires on April 30, 2026.

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