The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at Idaho National Laboratory is still in an outage that began in June, a Department of Energy spokesperson said Monday.
“The IWTU entered a scheduled outage in early June to replace the facility’s process gas filters,” the DOE spokesperson said in a Monday email reply to an Exchange Monitor inquiry. Scheduled maintenance periods are necessary to ensure the IWTU continues operating as designed. IWTU has solidified nearly 400,000 gallons of sodium-bearing waste at the Idaho lab into a solid, granular form, the spokesperson said.
“IWTU is currently shut down for maintenance, which includes Process Gas Filter inspection and filter replacement following discovery of a broken filter element,” the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) staff said in a report dated Aug. 14.
The outage is expected to run through December, DNFSB said in the report.
The IWTU is designed to solidify about 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste at the Idaho lab. Earlier this year, DOE said the IWTU has solidified more than 300,000 gallons.
The long-delayed IWTU has gone through multiple outages since coming online in April 2023.
Amentum-led Idaho Environmental Coalition is DOE’s nuclear cleanup contractor in charge of the IWTU.