The Energy Department and contractor Fluor Idaho have decided to delay by several years the demolition of an iconic nuclear reactor dome at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Officials planned to tear down the dome of the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II last fall — one of the final steps of the EBR-II facility decontamination and decommissioning process that began in 2009. But now DOE and Fluor officials have pushed off the project until later in the company’s five-year contract that began last June. They are using the money instead on more pressing areas of radioactive waste cleanup, including transuranic waste processing and removal before a 2018 state deadline.
A prominent feature in the INL skyline since the 1960s, the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II conducted a number of landmark safety and spent fuel recycling tests until 1994. The demolition delay is good news for former EBR-II employees who hope to save the dome for its historical value, and convert the interior for a new purpose, perhaps as an auditorium.
Jack Zimmerman, DOE’s deputy manager for the Idaho Cleanup Project, said agency officials haven’t yet figured out how it could be reused, however. “Right now our plan is to take it down, unless someone comes up with a purpose that we could transition it to,” he said.
The updated timeline has demolition starting in 2019, with completion in 2020, said Fluor Idaho spokesman Erik Simpson. The remaining work on the dome is expected to cost $5.8 million. The teardown process involves using explosives to remove a crane installed inside the dome, then employing a high-powered water stream called a “hydro jet” to slice up the reactor dome’s thick concrete and metal walls into manageable pieces. An 8-foot-thick concrete cap will be placed over the remaining structure.
Previous contractor CH2M-WG Idaho conducted $113 million worth of work on the decommissioning project dating to 2009. That included treating the reactor’s sodium coolant, and tearing down related buildings, such as a boiler facility, to clear space for new projects at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex. Workers stripped the interior of the dome and filled in the reactor basement with concrete grout, effectively “entombing” the reactor.
The reactor fired up in 1964 at what was then called Argonne National Laboratory-West. It helped power other facilities on the desert site, and conducted a number of fuel recycling and safety trials over the years — including a famous 1986 test that proved EBR-II’s unique design was inherently safe and would cool itself in the event of an accident or electrical blackout. The sodium-cooled design is being revived decades later as researchers work to develop a new generation of commercial nuclear power plants.
