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 of 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 Morning Briefing. 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 liquid to ensure the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (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.
Meanwhile, Fluor Idaho has 69% of its workforce vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a recent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) update.
A regular staff report to 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 and DOE did not immediately respond to a Tuesday afternoon request for comment.
Fluor Idaho mandates that 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.
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 $6.4-billion contract from DOE in May.
Initial construction of the IWTU was done by a prior contractor, CH2M-WGI, but the facility never worked as designed, according to the Government Accountability Office. Fluor-Idaho subsequently re-engineered key parts of the waste treatment unit.
