The Idaho Cleanup Project Citizens Advisory Board recently voted 7-4 to urge the Energy Department to extend the lifespan of the Idaho National Laboratory’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) by allowing the facility to process radioactive waste from out of state.
The letter, posted June 27 on the panel’s website, urges DOE to continue to run the waste processing center built to help end storage of out-of-state waste at the national lab.
The panel’s letter says several issues should be addressed before the AMWTP can take waste from elsewhere in the DOE complex. Among those issues: how much and what types of waste could be shipped to the lab and how the Energy Department would meet its mandate under a 1995 settlement agreement with Idaho to ship imported waste back out of state within 12 months.
In addition, priority must be given to the facility’s mission to package and ship Idaho’s own transuranic waste to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, according to the advisory panel.
The AMWTP was established under the agreement to process 65,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste. That mission is scheduled to conclude by the end of this year, although Idaho has said DOE might not meet the deadline. Most waste already going through AMWTP was shipped decades ago from Energy Department sites such as Rocky Flats in Colorado.
The Energy Department has said it might make business sense to keep AMWTP open to process waste from other locations, rather than building similar facilities at those DOE sites. The state has an interest in keeping the AMWTP workforce of several hundred people employed. The parties have already discussed the possibility of shipping 7,000 cubic meters of TRU waste from the Hanford Site in neighboring Washington state to AMWTP for repackaging.
The Energy Department has not yet submitted a formal request to bring off-site waste to Idaho to continue the mission of the AMWTP, Natalie Creed, hazardous waste unit manager at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, said this week by email.
The dissenting members of the citizens panel in the same letter last month noted the backlog of waste still at AMWTP. They added the majority said did not stress protection of the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer.
The vote happened at the end of the June 21 citizens panel meeting without the members having ever seen DOE’s business analysis on future uses of AMWTP, said Beatrice Brailsford, nuclear program director with the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho citizens group.
A DOE spokesperson said by email the department is studying the citizens board’s recommendation: “The evaluation of potential Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project future mission is ongoing; no decisions have been made.”
Fluor Idaho Still Seeking Cause of INL Drum Breach
Meanwhile, Fluor Idaho expects in September to finish decontamination operations at the INL site where four 55-gallon drums of radioactive waste overheated and ruptured on April 11.
The company also said, in a June 28 report on the incident to the Idaho DEQ, it should issue its final investigation findings in November, but no date has been set for resumption of waste repacking within Airlock 5 of the Accelerated Retrieval Project 5 facility.
The causal analysis of the event is being finalized, the Idaho Cleanup Project contractor reported. Fluor Idaho said previously “a significant portion” of the potential 220 gallons of repackaged waste sludge spewed onto the floor after the drums overheated and blew their lids. More than 90 percent of the spilled material has been gathered up using a vacuum and brush and placed in new containers.
In addition to analyzing samples of the sludge, Fluor Idaho is studying a drum within the retrieval area that did not overheat. Both analyses are part of the company’s efforts to determine what caused the overpressurization event.
Since the incident, crews have entered the airlock area about 50 times for decontamination work and to take samples, according to the report. There continues to be no sign of contamination outside the building, Fluor Idaho said.
The company’s most recent report covers the period from May 25 through June 21.
The drums contained waste sludge shipped to INL decades ago from Rocky Flats. The drums had not gone through the final characterization and certification process prior to shipment to WIPP.
As a result of the accident, the Senate’s fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act calls upon the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report on repackaging of transuranic waste at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Once a root cause is determined, Airlock 5 of the Accelerated Retrieval Project 5 facility will be evaluated to determine what needs to be done to safely resume operations, Doug Pruitt, a DOE program manager in the Idaho waste disposition program, said during the June 21 meeting of the Idaho Cleanup Project Citizens Advisory Board.
