There is a diminishing likelihood that the long-awaited Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory will begin operations this year, as had been hoped in some quarters, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board indicated recently.
The Energy Department and lab cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho have yet to announce a startup date, but DOE Idaho Deputy Manager Jack Zimmerman said in February it could happen this year. The facility is designed to treat liquid waste now in tanks, and in the process help DOE comply with a legal settlement.
In an important milestone, IWTU operators recently started feeding a nonradioactive waste simulant into the facility’s denitration mineralization reformer, the DNFSB said in its latest INL site report. The DMR is the facility’s main reaction vessel and the site of prior operational problems. The unit on July 20 kicked off 30 days of tests using the simulant, which will be followed by an extended 50-day run for more testing.
When the process is completed, Fluor Idaho plans a facility maintenance outage, which could take several months.
Built in 2012, the IWTU encountered design problems that delayed waste treatment operations. In public meetings this year, DOE officials have lauded the progress made in solving the startup issues. The federal agency could not immediately be reached for further comment prior to deadline.
The facility is an outgrowth of a 1995 legal settlement between DOE, Idaho, and the Navy over nuclear waste storage in the state. Among other things, the deal required DOE to treat nearly 900,000 gallons of high-level sodium-bearing liquid waste, found in tank farms at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center, by the end of 2012. When operational, the IWTU would convert that waste into a solid, granular material and then package it in stainless steel canisters.
The state barred further shipments of spent fuel to the Idaho National Laboratory after DOE missed the 2012 deadline. Idaho has also levied more than $4 million in penalties against the department for failing to get the IWTU running. The federal agency has conducted environmental projects in the state to offset some of the fines.
Fluor Idaho Still Working on Cause of April Drum Breach
Complete cleanup and decontamination is expected in November at the site of an April incident at the lab in which four drums of radioactive waste and blew off their lids, Fluor Idaho said in an Aug. 29 report to the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.
The company and is still working to determine the cause of the accident and has not yet set a date when it expects sludge repackaging work to resume. The drums that ruptured held repackaged sludge from waste buried at INL for years after having originally been shipped from Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site in Colorado.
The over pressurization and drum breach happened inside Room 106 of the WMF-1616 airlock at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Accelerated Retrieval Project 5.
But the company has received approval from Energy Department officials in Idaho to restart work in another area.
To allow resumption of operations at the ARP 8 areas, Fluor Idaho drafted an evaluation of the safety of the situation (ESS) that outlines new controls for waste-handling during exhumation and drum packaging station operations. Some work could resume in that area next week, the company said in its report. The company must file monthly reports on its efforts to the Idaho DEQ.
The area of ARP 5 where the accident occurred “remains a high contamination area and an airborne radioactivity area,” the DNFSB said in a report this month.
