The state of Idaho has assessed the U.S. Energy Department $6.77 million in fines for failure to start operating the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory by the end of 2012.
The Energy Department has already paid, or is in the process of working off, more than $5.6 million of the monetary fines, according to data provided by Natalie Creed, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality’s Hazardous Waste Bureau chief.
Most recently, DOE paid a cash penalty of over $1.1 million at the end of July, Creed said by email on Sept. 26. In addition, the federal agency is working off an additional $1 million in penalties by conducting a group of supplemental environmental projects approved by the state in late June.
The latest cash payment and environmental projects are applied to $2.19 million assessed by the state between March 31, 2018, and March 30, 2019.
The supplemental environmental projects undertaken by DOE range from helping residents in the city of Salmon reduce particulate matter in the area by installing less-polluting wood stoves, to financing a sewer upgrade project for schools in Bingham County, to installing thousands of feet of fences to block livestock from polluting streams that feed into the Upper Snake River.
Of about two-dozen environmental projects of various sizes approved so far, the first was completed in 2015 and the last will be done in early 2022.
The penalties, currently assessed at $6,000 per day, stem from non-compliance orders that grew out of a 1995 settlement on nuclear waste storage at INL between Idaho, the Energy Department, and the U.S. Navy.
The settlement agreement also called for DOE to start converting sodium waste in a liquid form by the end of 2012.
In 2015, Idaho began assessing penalties at $3,600 per day. In March 2017, the penalty was upped to the current $6,000 per day level. Thus far, the Energy Department has retired the fines through a combination of just over 52% in cash payments and less than 48% in environmental projects.
The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit is supposed to treat 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing liquid radioactive and hazardous waste. Under an agreement with the state, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management must treat the material and ship it out of the state by 2035.
The IWTU was basically finished in 2012 at a cost of $571 million, but has yet to function as designed, the Government Accountability Office noted last month. The cost of the facility hit $1 billion earlier this year. After many tweaks, the Energy Department is encouraged by a series of tests over the past year using a substance that simulates radioactive waste.
The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management expects the IWTU’s final trial run, using actual radioactive waste rather than a simulant, will start in early 2020, according to the GAO report.
The Energy Department has not published a firm timeline for actual operation of the IWTU.
The Energy Department’s $1.7 billion agreement with Idaho National Laboratory cleanup firm Fluor Idaho said the vendor will make the waste unit fully operational by the time its current contract expires in May 2021, the GAO noted in the latest report. Fluor took over the Idaho Cleanup Project in June 2016 from CH2M.
The Energy Department and state continue to look at options for addressing ongoing fines.
