A plant built to solidify sodium-bearing liquid radioactive waste at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory is offline for maintenance until June, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
According to a DNFSB staff report dated Feb. 7 and recently posted on the board’s website, the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) started preparing late last month for the outage.
On Jan. 28, routine sampling results indicated that granular activated carbon bed Bravo “had reached its mercury saturation limit,” according to the report. “IWTU personnel began preparations for plant shutdown for a planned outage” to replace the carbon bed and do other plant upkeep. “Normal IWTU operation is expected to resume in June 2025,” according to the board report. Such beds reed to be replaced from time to time.
This would be the second months-long outage for the IWTU in less than a year given last September it returned to service after being down for months to do a carbon-bed replacement and fix other problems.
The IWTU was also down for a couple of weeks in January, according to the DNFSB staff report. The facility, which is fueled by coal, had one of its feed lines in the main vessel clogged up due to a stray bolt and nail from the coal conveyor.
The first-of-its-kind facility, designed to solidify about 900,000 gallons of sodium bearing waste came online in April 2023, but has dealt with many glitches impairing sustained operations. IWTU is operated by Jacobs-led DOE contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition. The government contracting branch of Jacobs is now combined with Amentum.
