As the Department of Energy works to get the Idaho Integrated Waste Treatment Unit fully up and operational, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is asking DOE to consider performing additional independent assessment at the completion of start-up testing prior to introducing actual waste. A DNFSB staff report sent to DOE late last week outlined several concerns with how the Department performed a readiness assessment at the facility this spring, and listed examples of new “design and operational issues” that have been found during the startup process. “Based on the issues identified during the DOE RA and the continued identification of new design and operational issues during IWTU’s startup testing, the Board believes that additional independent assessment is warranted before the commencement of radioactive waste processing operations,” DNFSB Chairman Peter Winokur wrote in a May 23 letter, calling on DOE to provide a report and briefing within 30 days on the need for such an assessment.
The IWTU, also known as the Sodium-Bearing Waste Treatment Facility, is intended to treat the approximately 900,000 gallons of remaining liquid waste at the Idaho site through a steam reforming process for disposal and to allow for closure of the site’s remaining waste tanks. DOE has a commitment to the state of Idaho to complete the liquid waste processing by the end of this year. In late April, the facility entered into a planned outage period that was expected to last for about a month to prepare for the next stage of startup—the introduction of steam and a waste simulant. The DOE Idaho Operations Office declined to comment on the Board’s letter yesterday. CH2M-WG Idaho, the contractor responsible for the IWTU, did not return calls for comment.