Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
8/29/2014
As the Department of Energy continues to struggle to get into operation the Idaho Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, the Department appears to be planning for the facility to still be in operation in late 2015—almost a year beyond a current commitment to the state of Idaho to have all of the remaining liquid waste at the Idaho site treated through the facility by the end of this year. In early August, DOE issued a draft performance work statement for the new Idaho Cleanup Project Core contract, intended to replace the current cleanup contracts at the Idaho site that are set to expire at the end of Fiscal Year 2015. The draft performance work statement includes language on a “priced option” that would have the ICP Core contractor continue to operate the IWTU for three months to finish the liquid waste treatment mission. “The Contractor shall operate and maintain the IWTU for three months in order to complete treatment of all Sodium-Bearing Waste from INTEC Tanks WM-187, WM-188, WM-189, and WM-190 and store the waste product in the IWTU storage area,” the draft performance work statement says.
DOE declined to answer this week when asked when it expected to have the IWTU in operation, or whether or not it still expects to meet the commitment to the state of Idaho to have all of the liquid waste processed by the end of 2014. “The Department of Energy is committed to the commission and operation of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit in a safe and controlled manner,” the Department’s Idaho Operations Office said in a statement. CH2M-WG Idaho, the cleanup contractor responsible for the IWTU, did not respond to requests for comment this week.
DOE Already Has Missed One Commitment
The IWTU is intended to treat the approximately 900,000 gallons of remaining liquid waste at the Idaho site through a steam reforming process for disposal and to allow for closure of the site’s remaining waste tanks. DOE had previously committed to the state of Idaho to have the waste processed by the end of 2012, but in the summer of that year, startup of the IWTU facility was significantly disrupted by what has been described as a “pressure event” that occurred when the facility’s filters became clogged with carbon material during efforts to get it up to its operating temperature. The facility was shut down and DOE and CWI implemented a set of modifications, the last of which were completed last summer.
Once the facility modifications were complete, DOE and CWI worked again to get the IWTU to its normal operating temperature and pressure, and then moved forward with a contractor readiness assessment and subsequent DOE readiness assessment. In late May, though, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board expressed several concerns with how the DOE readiness assessment was performed, as well as several technical issues found after the assessment was completed. As a result, DOE agreed to conduct an additional independent assessment prior to introducing radioactive material.
As of mid-July, DOE and CWI were working on the next stage of the start-up process—the introduction of steam and a waste simulant into the IWTU facility. To date, though, simulant has not been added as work has been underway to address issues that have been discovered during the startup process. The DOE Idaho Operations Office did not respond late this week when asked for more detail about such issues, or when the introduction of simulant is currently scheduled to begin. Once testing with simulant is completed, the IWTU is then set to enter an outage period for inspections and DOE will seek approval from Idaho regulators to begin actual waste processing.
