The Department of Energy has likely exceeded its expense estimate for building an Idaho Cleanup Project facility by about $181 million, breaching the cost cap of $571 million in the wake of a mishap that shut down the plant during testing in 2012, the DOE Inspector General’s Office said Monday.
The Sodium-Bearing Waste Treatment Facility was built to treat 900,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste stored underground in tanks at the Idaho National Laboratory. Contractor CH2M-WG Idaho in June 2012 began comprehensive performance testing in which the plant processed 90,000 gallons of a nonradioactive substance to demonstrate it was ready to function fully as anticipated, according to the IG’s report. However, a “system pressure event” occurred on June 16, and the facility has been closed since for repairs and other fixes.
The DOE probe of the situation identified design and operational problems at the plant, and the IG said there were notable issues with the department’s oversight of the beginning of operations: “In particular, we found that the Department moved the work associated with the comprehensive performance test, which demonstrates that the facility would perform its mission 2 as designed, from the construction phase of the project to the operations phase of the project. This project modification resulted in the Department not performing a rigorous test of the functionality of the facility before construction was declared complete.”
Following earlier cost and schedule challenges, DOE had set the $571 million cost limit on construction of the facility; CH2M-WG Idaho is responsible for further expenses during the construction phase. But given the problems with the plant, the IG found the DOE’s expense maximum “did not successfully limit the construction costs borne by the taxpayers.” The cost is probably understated by roughly $181 million to date, with over $40 million more spending possible by the time the facility begins operations. “Recasting these ‘operation costs’ as construction costs would breach the approved limit of $571 million,” the IG said. The contractor is to receive full reimbursement for operations costs. The department to date has estimated the total cost for construction and subsequent operations at about $750 million.
“The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its contractors continue to focus on the start of safe operations for the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (also known as the Sodium-Bearing Waste Treatment Facility) at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory,” a department spokesperson said by email Monday. “DOE is taking a deliberative approach to starting up the IWTU to ensure all technical issues are resolved before beginning radioactive waste treatment operations.”
The spokesperson said the department made “significant progress” during the test phase, including preparing facility operators to “a high level of proficiency” and gleaning key operations data from the testing and simulant runs. Another simulant test will be conducted when the maintenance period ends, and the department intends to begin waste processing by Sept. 30 of this year.
