ARLINGTON, VA — A facility at the Idaho National Laboratory has solidified more than 68,000 gallons of sodium-bearing, liquid radioactive waste since starting operations in April and it will commence a maintenance outage later this month.
That was the word shared with DOE’s National Cleanup Workshop Tuesday on the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) by the federal agency’s Idaho Cleanup Project manager Connie Flohr and the president of the Jacobs-led remediation contractor, Ty Blackford.
The 68,000 gallons represents about 8% of the 900,000 gallons of liquid radioactive and hazardous waste stored underground tanks at the Idaho National Laboratory, Flohr said during a panel discussion.
“It was not going to be easy,” Blackford said. “Everybody just wants to flip the switch and have it turn on. I’m afraid this is not a Porsche … this takes a little bit of time to get it up to speed and make it work.”
The outage, initially planned for December, now will start next week, Blackford said. While down, crews will address problems with IWTU’s carbon beds and other glitches. Blackford said the outage should be concluded “relatively quickly.”
The IWTU is unique given it is a nuclear plant that runs on coal, Blackford said. The steam reforming plant is designed to solidify the 900,000 gallons into a stable, granular state for storage in stainless steel containers and eventual disposal.
Working with a simulant that mimics radioactive waste is still different “than when you put the real stuff in there,” Blackford said. “As we all know in the industry, it is never easy …. You have to work through the anomalies you see.”
“There is no prize for going quickly on this one,” Flohr said.
Built between 2007 and 2012, by a CH2M-led contractor, IWTU for long did not work as designed. Over the years first Fluor Idaho and more recently Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition, have tinkered with the unit. Dozens of modifications have been made to the plant, including the Denitration Mineralization Reformer where superheated beads are coated with radioactive waste, according to DOE.
