A wildfire that has burned 113,000 acres since Monday no longer poses a threat to the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory.
The Sheep Fire, started by a lightning strike, was 60% contained as of Thursday morning. As a result, the Idaho National Laboratory expects to resume normal operations today, the Energy Department said in an updated website post Wednesday evening.
“The fire no longer poses a threat to key INL research facilities,” according to a post by the INL emergency operations center. The fire occurred on lab property, but mostly in areas without people or buildings.
The fire could end up being the largest in the history of the Idaho National Laboratory, site officials said during a Wednesday press conference. As a precaution, most nonessential employees did not have to report to work facilities throughout the site on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the Radioactive Waste Management Complex being a notable exception.
The facilities that curtailed work included the Naval Reactors Facility, Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center, the Advanced Test Reactor, and Fluor Idaho’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit.
Fluor Idaho, the INL cleanup contractor, resumed operations Wednesday at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project and Accelerated Retrieval Project. Workers prepared a few shipments of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, officials said during the news conference.
With fewer people on-site at the 890-square-mile INL property, firefighters from INL, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and local municipalities worked to control the blaze.
No injuries have been reported. Air sampling conducted so far around INL indicate no increased radiation levels during the fire, DOE said.
Emergency officials said Wednesday the fire was mostly concentrated to “hot spots,” although there is always a risk the blaze could spread again due to swirling winds.
The blaze was dubbed the Sheep Fire because it started near a dirt access road called Sheep Road.
