Layoffs are expected to start within a couple months at Fluor Idaho’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP), Idaho Falls Mayor Rebecca Casper said Thursday.
The facility workforce at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory “is on its way out the door,” Casper said. This is expected “before the New Year, before the holidays,” she added during a presentation at the National Cleanup Workshop in Alexandria, Va.
The INL complex, near Idaho Falls, employs nearly 4,000 workers. It is the No. 5 employer in the state.
After the presentation, Casper declined to say exactly how she knew about upcoming layoffs or how many workers might lose their jobs, although the future of the AMWTP has been a subject of much speculation for a couple years.
The facility was established to meet court-mandated waste disposal deadlines in a 1995 legal settlement between the state of Idaho, DOE, and the Navy. The deal required roughly 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic and low-level waste stored at INL to be retrieved, packaged, and shipped to the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico by Dec. 31, 2018.
Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said recently the Energy Department is finishing a report on potential future uses for AMWTP. Since 2003, it has been treating the waste, most of which came to INL from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado.
But its current mission is expected to conclude by the end of this year or in early 2019. The ongoing study at DOE is said to consider allowing treatment of more out-of-state waste at AMWTP. Such a move might require revision to the legal settlement which says out-of-state waste cannot stay in Idaho longer than 12 months.
“Here we are, the clock is ticking,” Casper said. “Does it make sense to mothball a billion-dollar facility” with a skilled workforce, she asked.
The mayor believes about 700 workers are employed at the facility. The layoffs are expected to occur in phases, she said. Casper said she was heartened by a recent conversation with White, which indicated the long-anticipated report should be out by the end of the year.
“A decision must be made,” Casper said.
Fluor Idaho did not respond to a request for comment on any layoffs.
