John Ellis, Sequoyah Fuels president, said they shipped three loads on Friday and the last five truckloads went out Monday. The truckloads went out at about 2 p.m. Monday and are expected to arrive at the site in Nevada on Wednesday.
"It's done," Ellis said Monday of the disposal.
In February, the U.S. Army began removing the government-owned depleted uranium, which amounted to about one million pounds, that was stored at Sequoyah Fuels.
Sequoyah Fuels originally processed uranium for fuel rods for nuclear power generators, and then sold the depleted uranium to the U.S. Army for armor-piercing bullets.
Sequoyah Fuels has been closed since 1993 and the removal of the uranium is just one of the many steps in the plant's long-awaited closing.
"This plant is the first of its kind to be decommissioned," Ellis said.
Ellis said the government finally took responsibility for the uranium last fall.
The Defense Authorization Act signed by President George W. Bush last year made the removal of uranium, which is a low-radiation product, possible, Ellis told Your TIMES last month. Oklahoma legislators are also credited with helping to remove the depleted uranium by working on getting the language that required the removal of the depleted uranium by the U.S. Army in the act.
While Ellis originally expected that it would take only a week to remove the entire million pounds of uranium, that plan was delayed after they learned one of the containers had leaked.
The uranium is stored in sealed 55-gallon drums. The drums are then placed in steel boxes, which have plywood floors, and placed on truck trailers.
Ellis said the leak was discovered when the steel shipping box was being taken off the flatbed trailer in Nevada, where the drums were to be buried. After the discovery, the shipping box was never opened, he noted.
He said there was a "little bit of contamination" on the deck of the flatbed trailer, but it was confined to a limited area.
"It wasn't much," he said.
He said the one drum that leaked - out of 1,030 drums - had some water in it that leaked out. The rest of the drums contained dry material.
Ellis said that the drum that had leaked had been overpacked. He explained that the original drum started to deteriorate and was put in a new drum. One drum had water in it and leaked through the primary drum to the secondary drum.
As a precaution, the last eight shipments were halted for two or three weeks until they went through an evaluation and were repackaged, Ellis said.
The remaining drums for the last eight trucks were taken out of the steel boxes and put into another container.
"Three more layers of protection were added as a precaution," Ellis said.
Now that the uranium is gone, the plant is awaiting final approval on its reclamation plan from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to start tearing down the plant. The company submitted their first plan in 1995, Ellis said.
When the site is finally closed, the U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to take possession of the plant and between 100 and 300 acres of land surrounding the building.
Ellis said last month that it will take about five more years to completely close the site and transfer ownership.
