The Department of Energy intends in November to start up the long-delayed Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory, the federal agency told state officials.
That was the target DOE’s Office of Environmental Management gave officials with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality on a conference call last week, Kim Custer, a senior hazardous waste permit writer with the state agency, wrote Monday in an email.
As it did during the confirmatory run that concluded in July, the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) will begin running with a non-radioactive simulant liquid. After that, Jacobs-led lab cleanup contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition “will gradually start adding sodium bearing waste,” Custerl said by email Monday.
DOE, which did not respond to a request for comment as of Thursday, had asked the state for six more months until March 31, 2023, before it is required to convert its first canister of high-level radioactive sodium-bearing waste into a granular for eventual disposal. The DOE missed its prior deadline of processing the first canister by Sept. 30.
William (Ike) White, acting head of the Environmental Management office, said during a recent conference in Knoxville, Tenn., that he is cautiously optimistic IWTU will start up before year’s end.
IWTU, designed to convert 900,000 of sodium-bearing liquid waste from reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, has a long and difficult history.
A DOE cleanup contractor at the Idaho National Laboratory led by CH2M, now part of Jacobs, finished construction of the unit in 2012, but it never worked as designed. The next cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho spent years reworking and re-engineering major components of the treatment unit. Idaho Environmental Coalition took over in January.
