The Department of Energy has racked up more than $1 million in new penalties from the state of Idaho over the failure to begin operation of a liquid waste treatment facility at the Idaho National Laboratory.
The total fines levied against DOE and its current and former contractors on the project now stands at just shy of $1.5 million, but grows by $6,000 daily. While testing of the treatment technology continues, there was no word this week on when actual operations might begin.
The 53,000-square-foot Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) is intended to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste produced during Cold War-era spent fuel reprocessing at the laboratory. The facility was largely completed in 2012, but has not functioned correctly in testing, so the waste remains stored in underground tanks.
The 1995 state-federal consent order governing cleanup of the Idaho National Laboratory required that sodium-bearing high-level waste be processed by the end of 2012. That was later superseded by later agreements, most recently the Fifth Modification to the Notice of Noncompliance-Consent Order that directed DOE to begin treatment of the waste by Sept. 30, 2016. The department acknowledged in May of last year it would not meet that milestone.
The Fifth Modification instituted a $648,000 penalty against DOE. Former cleanup contractor CH2M-WG Idaho paid $338,000 of that amount, with DOE resolving the remaining penalty by funding four “supplemental environmental projects” in the state.
New penalties began to accrue after the Sept. 30, 2016, deadline passed without IWTU operations starting. From Oct. 1 to March 30, Idaho fined DOE $3,600 per day for a total of $648,000. The department had until May 30 to submit payment or proposals for additional supplemental environmental projects that would satisfy the penalty, Natalie Creed, hazardous waste compliance manager at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, told Weapons Complex Monitor. The state agency received a DOE proposal for seven SEPs on May 24, and is reviewing the offer, she said by email.
The state has been fining DOE at a rate of $6,000 per day since March 31, Creed said. That penalty had reached $510,000 as of Friday.
“It remains unclear at what point in the future DOE will be in compliance with the Fifth Modification and stop accruing penalties. The timing of subsequent notices for payment for stipulated penalties accruing from 3/31/17 will be determined at a later time,” Creed wrote. “DOE and its contractor, Fluor Idaho, LLC are working diligently to resolve the issues preventing the start-up of the IWTU.”
The Dec. 31, 2018, deadline to stop using the waste tanks remains in force, Creed noted.
A DOE spokesman in Idaho last week referred questions regarding the IWTU to Office of Environmental management headquarters, which did not respond. Fluor Idaho, which took over environmental management duties at the DOE site last June, also did not respond.
As of January, DOE had spent about $785 million on the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, more than $200 million over the $571 million budget set in 2010. The department was reportedly spending up to $5 million per month on the project.
The IWTU will process the liquid waste into a dry granular form that can be stored on-site in steel canisters within above-ground concrete vaults. Ultimately, it will be shipped to a DOE repository in another state.
Two specific technical problems plagued the project, DOE said in a May 2016 update: the necessity of preventing or greatly curbing buildup of a material called “wall scale” on the IWTU’s primary processing vessel; and fixing the vessel’s ring header, which is needed for waste treatment to begin.
Testing of a small-scale version of the IWTU’s reaction vessel, the Denitration Mineralization Reformer, were due to begin in January at Hazen Research near Denver.
Meanwhile, surrogate runs of the IWTU itself continue. The tests involve a nonradioactive simulant material to ensure that parts of the system work as intended, most recently the redesigned auger-grinder that will break up solid waste prior to storage, said Brian English, Idaho DEQ hazardous waste permits manager, said by phone.
The next surrogate run is anticipated within three to six months, according to Creed. The next test would last about 30 days, followed by a run of up to 50 days, English said.
The Department of Energy has not yet said when it anticipates beginning processing operations, he added. While Idaho officials are eager for work to begin, “the state is of the position that we want it to work right,” English said.
It has not yet been determined whether some of the processed waste could go to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, or if it all must wait for DOE to build its permanent repository for nuclear waste, English said.
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden has blocked shipment of spent nuclear fuel to the laboratory for research purposes until the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit is operational. The state Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the situation this week.
