A small leak of simulant, detected last week, has been cleaned up at a waste treatment facility undergoing commissioning at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, a spokesperson said Wednesday.
The “final preparations for the start of radiological operations” within the coming weeks, are continuing by DOE and its Jacobs-led contractor, Idaho Environmental Coalition, the spokesperson said in an email to Exchange Monitor.
Following the recent shutdown of the long-delated Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), “crews have entered the Denitration Mineralization Reformer cell to investigate a small leak of simulant on the cell floor,” the spokesperson said. “After an initial investigation and photographs for documentation, operations personnel cleaned up the residual simulant material.”
Operators and engineers have located the leak “and will inspect other components in the cell to ensure no additional repairs are needed,” the spokesperson said. “The goal is to replace the component responsible for the leak and safely return the IWTU to operational status.”
DOE said last week it expects to reheat the plant and start treating actual sodium-bearing liquid radioactive waste by early next month. In the early going, the IWTU’s operations will start with a blend of waste and simulant to ensure the plant runs as expected.
The shutdown of the plant was revealed last week at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix by DOE’s Idaho cleanup manager, Connie Flohr. Prior to that, more than 22,900 gallons of simulant was treated in the run-up to radiological operations, according to the spokesperson.
The steam-reforming technology plant has a long history of fits and starts.
The plant was built in 2012 to solidify about 900,000 gallons of liquid waste into a more stable granular form for long-term storage and ultimately disposal. But the IWTU did not work as intended and has undergone extensive re-engineering and revisions over the years. Idaho Environmental Coalition is the third cleanup contractor at INL involved with the protracted birthing process.
So far, the state of Idaho has assessed DOE about $12 million in civil penalties for the federal agency’s failure to immobilize the high-level sodium bearing radioactive waste at INL’s Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center, according to an Idaho Department of Environmental Quality spokesperson.
