The Energy Department, together with the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, have launched a site-wide five-year review of cleanup at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Five-year reviews gauge the effectiveness of remediation efforts as required by the Superfund law, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), Fluor Idaho said in a Friday press release.
Fluor Idaho has the five-year, $1.86 billion remediation contract that runs through May 2021 at INL. The work includes protecting the Snake River Aquifer, packaging and shipping transuranic waste, and other tasks for the Idaho Cleanup Project.
In February the DOE released a request for proposals for a new Idaho cleanup contract for a term of up to 15 years and $6.4 billion.
The five-year reviews are required by CERCLA when contaminants remain onsite in concentrations that preclude unlimited use of a site. The Energy Department, as the owner of INL, has ultimate authority for putting together the report, according to an online video on an EPA website.
The review is not a decision-making document but rather a “snap-shot in time” that offers a status report on the effectiveness of the remedial actions that have been implemented, a DOE spokesperson said in a Monday email.
The process weighs the past five years of reporting data, such as groundwater monitoring reports.
A draft version of the five-year review should be ready in August and the final version in January 2021.
Such five-year plans for contaminated federal sites grew of out of a July 2011 working group comprising representatives from EPA, DOE, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Interior.
The Idaho National Laboratory was established in 1949 on a former Naval gunnery range site. Parts of INL are contaminated with legacy wastes leftover from World War II and Cold War weapons testing, as well as government research into nuclear power, and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing.
