Tank waste operations, particularly a project at the Idaho National Laboratory, are hard hit by workplace restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the No. 2 official at the Department of Energy cleanup office said Monday.
A year ago, the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) expected the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at Idaho to start hot commissioning in 2020. But that won’t happen until the first half of next year, with full operation delayed to September 2021.
“This plant more than any other, the schedule was impacted by COVID,” said Todd Shrader, the EM principal deputy assistant secretary, during an online meeting of the chairs of the Environmental Management’s Site-Specific Advisory Boards.
The long-delayed IWTU is intended to treat 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing radioactive waste. Initial construction of the plant was largely completed in 2012 by prior contractor CH2M-WG Idaho. In years since then, cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho has re-designed major components and is encouraged by simulant tests in the past year, mostly before the pandemic reduced on-site work at Idaho and other DOE operations in March.
Hot commissioning and operation of the IWTU involves welding and other close quarters work, Shrader said. “Unfortunately, that requires workers to be right up on top of each other,” he added.
Elsewhere in the weapons complex, tank waste operations have been slowed at both the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Shrader said. Savannah River, at least, has been able to recently start hot commissioning of the Salt Waste Processing Facility built by Parsons.
At Hanford, an overnight shift has been added to help compensate for the smaller clusters of workers allowed onsite due to pandemic social distancing requirements, Shrader said.
Projects that largely involve “moving dirt” have been barely affected, Shrader said, pointing to the Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Action Project in Moab, Utah. Shrader’s comments came after one of the board chairs asked the No. 2 EM official to try and quantify delays brought about by the novel coronavirus.
On an unrelated note, Shrader told the board chairs that EM would this week transfer a tract of land at the Nevada National Security Site to the DOE Office of Legacy Management. The latter is where defense-nuclear property is assigned for long-term monitoring after EM deems land cleaned up.
