More staff is being recalled for cleanup work at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a Fluor Idaho spokesman said Friday.
“We have slowly started to increase staff on an as-needed basis to support limited activities at the Idaho Cleanup Project, and those numbers vary from day to day,” Fluor Idaho spokesman Erik Simpson said in an email. He declined to offer specific numbers.
Workers are being brought back to support key missions such as deployment of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), Simpson said.
The Idaho National Laboratory and its remediation vendor have been limited to “essential mission critical” activities since late March, when DOE dramatically scaled back staffing at nearly all of its nuclear cleanup sites in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Fluor Idaho normally has 1,800-plus employees on-site, but the number was reduced to 450, with another 450 working remotely. The rest were collecting paid leave.
The IWTU was placed into a safe configuration during this time, according to documents from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). This common move was made to minimize the chances of any radioactive or chemical accident during reduce staffing.
The Idaho National Laboratory announced earlier this month it was start a slow increase in work inside the fence. Fluor Idaho is employing social distancing, more hand cleaning, and voluntary use of face coverings as the workforce increases, Simpson said.
The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit is a long-anticipated project to convert sodium-bearing waste into a more stable form for disposal. The original startup goal was 2012, but DOE and then-contractor CH2M-WG Idaho never got the facility to work as designed. But the agency and Fluor Idaho have modified the IWTU in recent years and are encouraged by tests carried out in 2019.
Coming into 2020, DOE’s new goal for deployment of the facility was this year. No change has been announced to the timetable to date, although the reduced staffing has cost the project a couple months without much physical work.
