Siemens Power Will Register Reactor Solution As Fertilizer

A nuclear fuel fabrication plant will register as a fertilizer the ammonium hydroxide solution it makes from waste from the production of nuclear reactor fuel, a company spokesman said Monday.

On Friday, the state Department of Agriculture ordered Siemens Power Corp. in Richland to stop selling the solution because it is unregistered.

“We sell our ammonium hydroxide as a commercial chemical. We are not involved in marketing and selling it directly as a fertilizer product,” said Wayne Baker, a Siemens spokesman.

Siemens has sold 390,000 gallons of ammonium hydroxide since the mid-1990s. It is used to make low-enriched uranium reactor fuel and also is a byproduct of that process. Siemens sells the waste ammonium hydroxide to distributors who then sell it to businesses for a variety of uses.

Under the 1998 Fertilizer Regulation Act, all waste-derived fertilizers must be reviewed by the state to make sure they do not violate restrictions on disposal of hazardous wastes. Siemens did not seek such a review.

“Since we were not marketing it or selling it directly as a fertilizer, we did not realize the Department of Agriculture regulations were applicable until they issued their stop-sale order,” Baker said.

“I think where we’re going to head on this is (to) just go ahead and register it.”

Under its license with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Siemens is required to ensure that each batch of ammonium hydroxide solution contains no more than .05 parts per million of uranium.

“That’s pretty specific, and we do analyses to verify that,” Baker said.

Based on the NRC limit, the material should pose no health hazard from radioactivity, but the state is interested in determining what, if any, other hazardous substances may be in the ammonium hydroxide solution.

“Because it is at such a low level as far as radioactivity, we’re not concerned about that so much as knowing more about the material and possible contaminants, what the possible tag-along contaminants might be,” said Miles Kuntz, an environmental specialist with the state Department of Ecology.

The state will be sampling, analyzing and tracking distribution of the material.