The U.S. Department of Energy has as of Tuesday incurred $3.2 million in fines from the state of Idaho for failure to successfully start operating the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory.
The federal agency has paid part of that amount, primarily through environmental cleanup projects in the state, but the penalty continues to accrue at a rate of $6,000 per day until the IWTU is operational.
The facility is intended to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste produced during Cold War-era spent fuel reprocessing at the laboratory. It would use a method known as steam reforming to convert the waste into a solid form for disposal.
Construction was largely finished in 2012, but DOE has had trouble getting the IWTU to work as intended. DOE Idaho Deputy Manager Jack Zimmerman reportedly said in January that waste treatment could begin this year.
The next simulated run of the IWTU is scheduled this spring, according to the slides from Zimmerman’s Jan. 31 presentation in Boise to the Leadership in Nuclear Energy (LINE) Commission. LINE is an advisory panel on INL issues for Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter.
The test runs with simulated waste help gauge the success of the redesign of the facility’s main waste processing vessel, the Denitration Mineralization Reformer (DMR).
Zimmerman was quoted in the Idaho Falls Post Register as saying that successful testing could provide DOE with the confidence to start treating actual liquid waste by the end of this calendar year. DOE’s fiscal 2019 funding request includes funds for commissioning the IWTU, but the exact amount has not yet been made public.
INL spokesperson Sarah Neumann provided a copy of Zimmerman’s slides but did not offer any further details on the DOE officials comments to LINE. Current site cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho could not immediately be reached for comment.
While Idaho’s Department of Environmental Quality is “encouraged by the progress made by DOE and their contractor on resolving issues with the IWTU,” the federal agency nonetheless continues to incur $6,000 in daily fines, Natalie Creed, DEQ hazardous waste program manager, said by email.
The Energy Department is working off much of the penalties through performance of supplemental environmental projects (SEPs) in Idaho. The first penalty tranche of $648,000 has been retired, with former Idaho cleanup contractor CH2M-WG Idaho paying over $338,000 and DOE satisfying the rest of by completing four SEPs between 2015 and 2017.
In July 2017, the Idaho DEQ approved a DOE plan for six more environmental projects to satisfy the $648,000 in penalties that were assessed from Oct. 1, 2016, through March 30, 2017. During this period DOE was fined $3,600 daily. The penalties rose to the present rate as of March 31, 2017.
Idaho has assessed the fines since 2015 under a series of modifications to a noncompliance consent order first issued in the 1990s. The consent order was worked out between the state and DOE over hazardous waste violations at INL. The Energy Department has been penalized both for failure to empty the tanks where the liquid waste is stored and, separately, failure to complete treatment of the waste by the end of 2012, Creed said.
In September 2017, DEQ agreed to start updating DOE’s penalty obligation on an annual basis, rather than semiannually. The next DOE proposal on fines is due May 29, Creed said.
The next one-year’s worth of daily penalty accrual will cover March 31, 2017 to March 30, 2018. The Energy Department will have 60 days from March 30 to detail how it plans to retire the latest fines, which could entail cash payments or supplemental environmental projects.
Attorney General Lawrence Wasden “is optimistic about the momentum around IWTU,” Wasden spokesman Scott Graff said in a recent email. The AG’s Office declined further comment, however.
DOE Could Miss 2018 Deadline to Ship Out TRU Waste
Zimmerman also told LINE that DOE is in danger of missing the 2018 deadline to ship all transuranic waste at INL out of Idaho.
That comes even as the agency has increased its pace of shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for permanent disposal. Zimmerman’s slides didn’t offer any additional details.
Under the 1995 legal settlement agreement with the state, DOE is required to ship all transuranic waste at the Idaho National Laboratory out of the state by Dec. 31, 2018. INL had shipped about 55,000 of the 65,000 cubic meters of the waste material by early 2014.
However, waste shipments to WIPP from across the DOE complex were halted for more than three years following a pair of February 2014 accidents in the underground disposal site. Shipments resumed last April.
“The requirement to meet a 2,000 cubic meter running average of shipping TRU to WIPP was missed after WIPP shut down and does not look likely to be met in the future,” Susan Burke, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality oversight coordinator for INL, said by email this week.
Approximately 9,200 cubic meters remain to be shipped out of Idaho, a DOE spokesperson said Friday.
Much of Idaho’s transuranic waste came from the retired Rocky Flats Plant near Denver
The Idaho National Laboratory accounted for 88 of the 133 TRU waste shipments received by WIPP in 2017. In addition, eight of the first 13 shipments sent to WIPP during January came from INL. WIPP had received 13 shipments this year as of Jan. 25, according to the latest publicly available data.
