What to do with radioactive waste in rural Oklahoma town? A court fight is on

Fighting together in court to stop the permanent disposal of radioactive waste near the Arkansas and Illinois rivers, the Cherokee Nation and the state of Oklahoma obtained a restraining order Thursday against a long-out-of-business uranium plant.

The Sequoyah Fuels facility, located in the town of Gore about 3 miles north of where the Arkansas and Illinois meet, opened in 1970 to convert yellowcake uranium into fuel for nuclear reactors. When it closed in 1993, the plant left behind approximately 11,000 tons of “uranium-contaminated sludge” in various “basins, lagoons and ditches at the site,” according to statements from the Cherokee Nation.

The waste has since been collected and stored in bags on top of a concrete slab to minimize the risk of contaminating groundwater, according to court records.

Sequoyah Fuels agreed in 2004 to spend as much as $3.5 million to remove the sludge and dispose of it permanently somewhere else, Cherokee officials said. But the company recently informed the tribe that it could not find a suitable place to take the waste, so it would begin putting the sludge into a permanent disposal cell at the site itself, the tribe said.

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