The Energy Department has to date spent about $785 million on its Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory, a DOE spokeswoman said, a tally that is more than $200 million over budget.
The system’s budget was capped at $571 million in 2010, while a 2006 estimate had said the facility — designed to treat 900,000 gallons of radioactive sodium-bearing waste — would cost just $461 million to build. Previous contractor CH2M-WG Idaho had also spent at least $90 million of its own money on the project due to the cost overruns, before Fluor Idaho took over in June.
The 53,000-square-foot facility has been largely complete since 2012 but has never functioned correctly in testing. DOE continues to spend as much as $5 million per month on the project, as officials look to solve several recurring glitches and fix equipment. Tests on a small-scale version of the facility’s problem-prone reaction vessel, the Denitration Mineralization Reformer, or DMR, are set to begin this month at Hazen Research near Denver.
Since October, DOE also has accrued fines of $3,600 per day — totaling more than $300,000 so far — from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) after missing the Sept. 30 deadline for the facility to begin operating. The state and DOE have yet to negotiate a new deadline. Fines will increase to $6,000 per day starting in April if the facility hasn’t begun treating waste.
The fines are tied a set of consent order milestones negotiated between DEQ and DOE last year, the fifth time the milestones have been modified. In the April time frame, the state and federal agencies should reach a deal on how DOE will pay the initial six months of fines, according to Natalie Creed, hazardous waste compliance manager at DEQ. One option would be to pay for “supplemental environmental projects,” as DOE did to address part of $648,000 in fines for failing to meet a late-2014 deadline on the IWTU.
DOE officials say the three stainless steel tanks that hold the waste are not at risk of leaking, but they are more than 50 years old and DEQ and other state agencies have voiced concern that a leak would threaten the Snake River Plain Aquifer. The fines are levied at a daily rate of $1,200 per tank.
Letters show DOE officials argued repeatedly in recent months to avoid or delay the fines, but DEQ refused. “We do not intend to reduce, hold in abeyance, toll, or waive any fines or penalties provided for under the terms of the (agreement),” DEQ Director John Tippets wrote in an Oct. 31 letter to Idaho Cleanup Project Deputy Director Jack Zimmerman.
Still, DEQ officials have said they are encouraged by Fluor Idaho, which appears to be taking a more thorough and methodical approach than its predecessor to making the facility operational. Fluor has tapped experts around the country for help.
DOE said the upcoming series of experiments on a small-scale version of the DMR will use a mixture that resembles the real sodium-bearing waste, in order to find the ideal waste treatment conditions, and avoid a bark-like substance known as wall scale that has formed inside the main processing vessel during previous test runs. The bark has caused clogs and disrupted the movement of billions of sand-like particles that are used to solidify the waste inside the vessel, according to DOE.
