Department of Energy contractor Fluor Idaho intends in April to resume sludge repackaging at an Idaho National Laboratory fabric filter building where four drums of radioactive waste overheated and ejected their lids about one year earlier.
The company informed the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality of its plans on Feb. 28 in a monthly report on the incident. Energy Department officials in Idaho last week approved the company’s “engineering path forward” to start processing and removal of 37 remaining “parent containers” of sludge waste at the location of the over-pressurization accident.
Details on restart will be presented to the DEQ for consideration in upcoming meetings and conference calls, Fluor Idaho said in its 10th monthly update on the accident.
The Energy Department recently provided formal comments to Fluor Idaho on its corrective action plan within the Accelerated Retrieval Project No. 5 facility at INL’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex. The plan should be submitted to the state this month for review.
Decontamination of Room 106 of the Waste Management Facility-1617, where the incident occurred at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex, is largely complete. But waste material from the cleanup and some untreated drums remain.
On April 11, 2018, four 55-gallon drums of sludge waste overheated to about 150 degrees Celsius after depleted uranium contacted air for the first time in decades. The containers, originally generated at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver, were being reopened and the material repackaged after having been buried at INL for decades. No one was hurt in the incident, which occurred at night with nobody in the room, although waste waste ejected onto the ceilings and walls.
Changes are being implemented to the repackaging operation to ensure such an event does not happen again. Pending state concurrence, Fluor Idaho anticipates changes will be made to its DEQ operating permit.
Fluor Idaho prepares and ships material to the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico as part of its $1.5 billion Idaho Cleanup Project contract that extends through May 2021.
