The state of Idaho has now assessed the Energy Department $4.77 million in penalties for its failure to start treating sodium-bearing waste at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Fluor Idaho has estimated it could be well into 2019 before it begins operation of DOE’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), Natalie Creed, hazardous waste unit manager at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), said by email.
In June, the state agency signed off on DOE’s latest group of proposed supplemental environmental projects, which will allow the federal agency to retire the $2.19 million worth of daily fines assessed between April 1, 2017, and March 30, 2018. The Energy Department and its contractors had previously agreed to perform $1.3 million worth of environmental projects to help retire earlier financial penalties. The total dollar amount of SEPs approved so far is about $3.15 million.
The Idaho DEQ has since 2015 fined the Energy Department each day for failure to begin treatment of 900,000 gallons of Cold War-era sodium-bearing waste produced by spent fuel reprocessing at INL. The penalties – which began at $3,600 per day and then increased to $6,000 daily in March 2017 –are issued under a series of modifications to a noncompliance consent order, which grew out of a 1995 settlement on nuclear waste storage between Idaho, the Energy Department, and the U.S. Navy.
Although the waste treatment facility was largely complete in 2012, it has never worked as planned to carry out its mission of converting the waste into a solid form for storage on-site pending final disposal off-site. The federal agency has said its recent 30-day test with 53,000 gallons of simulant went well at IWTU.
