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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has published the "Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Alternative Strategies for the Long-Term Management and Use of Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride" (DOE/EIS-0269) including a preferred alternative. The document describes the potential environmental impacts of reasonable alternatives to manage the inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6).

"Issuing this Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) is an important step in dealing with the depleted UF6 legacy left from the department's uranium enrichment activities," said William D. Magwood, IV, director of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology at the Energy Department. "With the issuance of the record of decision next month, we look forward to vigorously moving ahead, converting the material to a more stable form."

The department has management responsibility for approximately 700,000 metric tons of depleted UF6 stored in 57,634 steel cylinders at the East Tennessee Technology Park (formerly known as the K-25 site) on the Oak Ridge Reservation and at the Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky., gaseous diffusion plant sites. This inventory resulted from many years of uranium enrichment operations by the department and includes 11,212 cylinders of material transferred to DOE from the United States Enrichment Corporation Inc. under two recent memoranda of agreement.

In the PEIS, the department analyzed alternative management strategies for the inventory of depleted UF6 stored at all three sites. The preferred alternative in the final PEIS is to begin conversion of the UF6 inventory as soon as possible. The UF6 would be converted to uranium oxide, uranium metal, or a combination of both, while allowing for future use of as much of this inventory as possible. The preferred alternative presented in the final PEIS has been revised based, in part, on public comments on the draft PEIS.

A draft PEIS was issued December 24, 1997, followed by a 120-day public comment period ending April 23, 1998. Public hearings to receive comments on the draft PEIS were held in Portsmouth, Ohio; Paducah, Ky.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Washington, D.C., during February and March 1998. DOE considered all 600 comments received on the draft PEIS in preparing the final document.

The final PEIS is comprised of three volumes: Volume 1 - Main Text (about 500 pages), Volume 2 - Appendices and Volume 3 - Comment Response Document. A summary of the final PEIS is bound separately. The final PEIS is available through the web at www.ne.doe.gov or by calling 1-800/517-3191. The document is also available at DOE reading rooms in Paducah, Ky.; Portsmouth, Ohio; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Washington, D.C.

A record of decision will be issued 30 days or more following publication of the notice of availability of the final PEIS in the "Federal Register."