Fluor Idaho, which is winding down its $2.3-billion cleanup contract at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, paused a test run with simulant at the long-anticipated Integrated Waste Treatment Unit due to visible emissions coming from a stack during heat-up, a manager with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality said via email Tuesday.
As Fluor “started heating the granulated activated carbon (GAC) beds of the mercury scrubber they observed that there was a visible emission from the stack,” Brian English, a hazardous waste permits supervisor, with the Idaho agency said in an email to Weapons Complex Monitor. The contractors’ permit bans visible emissions other than steam. Fluor is working to fix the issue and will let the state know when it is resolved, English added.
On Nov. 5 at the Radwaste Summit in Summerlin, Nev., an annual conference sponsored by ExchangeMonitor Publications, a DOE manager in Idaho, Joel Case, said Fluor Idaho was about to start a 50-day test run with a simulant to ensure the IWTU systems work properly.
The long-delayed facility is designed to treat about 850,000 gallons of highly radioactive sodium-bearing liquid tank waste at the laboratory and convert it into a more solid granular form. Earlier this year, the state approved a 15-month deadline extension until September 2022 for DOE and the contractor to fill the first canister of sodium waste in a granular form.
“IWTU continues to make progress,” a DOE spokesperson said by email Friday, adding none of the technical problems encountered are show-stoppers.
“As one would expect with any first-of-its-kind, state-of-the-art facility, there have been needed testing and fine-tuning of components during the start-up phase,” the DOE spokesperson said. “Such adjustments are not unexpected of this or any large industrial facility.”
IWTU continues to make progress. The project has completed the heat up of the Denitration Mineralization Reformer and the Carbon Reduction Reformer components, and both vessels are in automatic temperature control. The plant is in the process of conditioning the new Granulated Activated Carbon (GAC) bed material that was replaced during the recent Outage J. Once both GAC beds are conditioned, we expect to transition to fluidizing steam and initiating simulant feed in a confirmatory run. As one would expect with any first-of-its kind, state-of-the-art facility, there have been needed testing and fine-tuning of components during the start-up phase. Such adjustments are not unexpected of this or any large industrial facility. – DOE
Meanwhile, Fluor Idaho has 69% of its workforce vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a recent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board update.
A regular staff report to Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Technical Director Christopher Roscetti, said 69% of the contractor’s people are “fully vaccinated” while 93% of all DOE personnel at the site have been inoculated, according to the report dated Nov. 5.
“If current staff vaccination rates remain nearly the same, strict enforcement of this vaccination policy may impact operational capabilities at INL,” according to the DNFSB.
Fluor Idaho mandates all members of the Idaho Cleanup Project be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8, to avoid disciplinary actions, including termination, according to the one-page DNFSB report. At the time of the report, Fluor Idaho had set a Nov. 4 deadline for employees to request “reasonable accommodations” to the vaccination order implemented after President Joe Biden’s September executive orders pushing for full vaccination of the workforce.
The federal agency and Fluor Idaho are working towards meeting the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for contractors by Dec. 8,” the DOE spokesperson said.
Fluor Idaho, which has held the business since June 1, 2016, is expected to turn over the reins of the cleanup operations and the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit around Jan. 1 to Idaho Environmental Coalition, a team made up of Jacobs and North Wind Portage. The new team was the winner of a $6.4-billion contract from DOE in May.
Initial construction of the IWTU was done by a prior contractor, CH2M-WGI, which finished the facility in 2012. However, the plant never worked as designed and Fluor-Idaho subsequently re-engineered key parts of the waste treatment unit. The total cost, including construction and re-engineering, of the IWTU, stood at $1 billion as of early 2019, according to GAO.
