The end is within sight for the Department of Energy’s effort to treat 65,000 cubic yards of transuranic waste, held in interim storage at Idaho National Laboratory, to the Waste isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
Of the material shipped to Idaho from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado between 1970 and 1990, only 5,700 cubic meters remain, Idaho Cleanup Project Manager Connie Flohr said in a Jan. 27 presentation to the Idaho Leadership in Nuclear Energy Commission.
Of the 5,700 cubic meters, 500 cubic meters that still need treatment, 3,900 cubic meters must still be certified and 1,300 cubic meters is “ready to ship,” according to Flohr’s slide presentation. Treatment of the last 500 cubic meters should be done by the end of this year, according to DOE. The actual transport of the remaining transuranic waste could take eight to 10 years, depending on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) shipping schedule, according to DOE.
The waste was originally supposed to be shipped to WIPP by Dec. 31, 2018, but that plan was derailed as a result of the February 2014 underground radiation leak that forced the salt mine in New Mexico offline for about three years.
Separately, in her presentation, Flohr indicated that DOE and contractor Fluor Idaho are now in the advanced stages of preparing for a major test run of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit built to treat 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing liquid radioactive waste. Originally built in 2012, the facility never worked as designed and has been modified extensively since then. Fluor and the DOE intend to get the unit online this year, perhaps as soon as June.
Note: The first and third paragraphs were modified Feb. 11 to show that shipment to WIPP could take several years.
