The Energy Department and cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho are still in the early stages of the investigation of an April 11 breach of four drums of radioactive waste at the Idaho Site, a state official said this week.
“They have made several re-entries and are in the process of collecting samples but it will likely be a little while before they have the results,” Natalie Creed, hazardous waste unit manager for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, said by email Thursday.
Fluor Idaho submitted its first written report on the incident to the state on April 27 and has agreed to provide Idaho DEQ with written updates every 30 days, starting at the end of May, Creed said.
A plan for “investigation, sampling, and recovery” should be completed in early May, the contractor said in its April 27 report to the state. When contacted Wednesday, Fluor Idaho spokesman Erik Simpson said by email the investigation continues, but the company didn’t expect to provide any additional details this week.
The event took place in Room 106 of a building at the Accelerated Retrieval Project 5 (ARP 5) facility. At about 10:30 p.m., a fire crew responded to an alarm at the site. The team found one drum missing its lid. There were no flames evident but the 55-gallon drum was smoking. The team extinguished the smoldering drum before withdrawing.
Three other drums were subsequently confirmed to have ejected their lids.
Contractor crews re-entered the room three times between April 11 and April 27, according to the report. The first re-entry occurred on April 19, with two more on April 25.
The initial crew on April 19 saw four drums with missing lids, as well a “solid, powdery waste and debris on the floor and on adjacent closed containers,” the DOE report says. Since the accident a crew has installed a camera at the site of the drum breach.
ARP 5 is located within the Radioactive Waste Management Complex at the Idaho National Laboratory. The Sludge Repackage Project at ARP 5 is licensed for container storage and various treatment and processing operations. The breached sludge drums had not yet been certified for shipment to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
The sludge waste had years ago been shipped to Idaho from the retired Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility in Colorado. It had initially been stored in a subsurface disposal area at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex. This waste was later dug up from various burial pits and trenches, according to the Fluor Idaho report.
