Over the next 10 years, virtually all of the legacy transuranic waste at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory will be shipped to New Mexico for underground disposal and the lab’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex will be closed, the president of Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition, said Thursday.
In addition, the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) now in its final test run will complete treatment of about 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing waste and three units at the laboratory complex’s Naval Reactors Facility will be torn down, Ty Blackford told an online meeting of the Citizens Advisory Board for the Idaho Cleanup Project.
“The desert landscape at the site will look significantly different during the next decade with an eye toward footprint reduction,” Blackford said.
The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC), composed of Jacobs, Idaho-based North Wind Portage and a trio of subcontractors— Navarro, Oak Ridge Technologies and Spectra Tech, took over cleanup from Fluor Idaho in January. The contract, with a ceiling of $6.4 billion, is based around task orders, Blackford said.
The first task order involved the transition itself. The contractor team and Connie Flohr, DOE’s top cleanup manager in Idaho, are putting the finishing touches on the second task order, which involves drafting a 10-year plan, Blackford and Flohr said.
The new prime’s team members have experience with remediation at Idaho and with protecting the Snake River aquifer, Blackford said. Jacobs, through its CH2M subsidiary, was part of the CH2M-WG Idaho team that held the business prior to Fluor. Subcontractor Spectra Tech was the incumbent for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-licensed spent fuel storage, now folded into the new Idaho Cleanup Project contract.
Finally, IEC has hired “99.99%” of the incumbent Fluor workforce, Blackford said. “They know what to do. They have been doing it for a very long time,” he added. Only about seven new faces have been brought in by IEC, he said.
The newest addition to the work plan at the Idaho National Laboratory is the recent formal agreement with the Naval Reactors Facility, Blackford said.
Asbestos removal at structures around the Submarine 1st Generation Westinghouse (S1W) prototype facility is getting underway. “They just gave us our own separate entrance gate,” Flohr said. While trucks carrying cleanup crews must still clear security, it is easier for their trucks to access the naval site for environmental work, she said.
