The Energy Department is seeking Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval for a one-time shipment of 2.5 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel material from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to the Idaho National Laboratory for research purposes.
The nuclear regulator said June 26 it had received DOE’s application for approval of a shipment route and hoped to finish its review within 45 days.
The project would involve using INL research facilities, including the Advanced Test Reactor, to study high-burnup fuel performance to support the nuclear power industry, an Energy Department spokesperson in Idaho said in a Wednesday email.
The lab has been seeking additional data on the impact of high burnup fuel aging on dry storage cask systems, along with long-term aging of spent fuel.
The current timeline would have the Idaho National Laboratory receive 2.5 kilograms of heavy metal spent nuclear fuel in 2019 and then perform the research, the spokesperson said.
The state has prohibited DOE from sending any more spent fuel to Idaho until the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the lab is functional. The facility was mostly finished in 2012 but did not operate as planned. The Energy Department has said it is getting closer to operating IWTU, which is meant to finish treating 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing radioactive waste. Still need description of what this treatment involves.
The IWTU will use a steam-reforming technology to heat and dry the liquid waste, and consolidate it into solid, granular material for packaging in steel containers before final shipment to the DOE Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Energy Department officials in Idaho indicated in February the facility might be ready this year, although no hard date has been released.
“The material will not be received at INL until the issues surrounding the current prohibitions on spent fuel receipts with the state of Idaho are resolved,” the DOE spokesperson said. The research effort is in the planning stages and would be conducted in in two phases that could stretch out over nine to 12 years
After scientific efforts of this sort are completed, the “specimens” are usually kept at INL for future research, the DOE spokesman said, again adding no decisions have been made.
The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality “does not have a position on this matter as DOE has not made a request for any spent nuclear fuel to come to Idaho and, as I previously indicated, is currently not allowed to bring any spent fuel to the state,” said Susan Burke, INL oversight coordinator for the state agency.
A 1995 settlement agreement between Idaho, the Energy Department, and the U.S. Navy stipulates any out-of-state nuclear waste must be shipped back out within 12 months of arrival. The state was concerned about the amount of waste, from the retired Rocky Flats weapons plant in Colorado and other sites, that has been stored at INL for decades.
Under the same agreement, Idaho has been fining DOE daily because it has yet to start treating liquid waste at the long-delayed ITWU.
