For the third time in four years, the Energy Department has delayed the start-date for treating almost 1 million gallons of liquid waste at its Idaho site, the agency announced late Friday.
In a press release that hit the wire around 3 p.m. Eastern time, DOE said it “notified the State of Idaho that it is unlikely to meet the regulatory deadline [of Sept. 30] for initiation of waste treatment of the sodium-bearing waste at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory Site.”
Per the 1992 consent order between DOE and the state, IWTU was supposed to come online in 2012. The agency has now delayed the start of operations three times and currently has no firm start-date for the facility.
However, the agency and its new site cleanup contractor, Fluor Idaho, hope to have a schedule update in August, Jack Zimmerman, DOE deputy manager for the Idaho Cleanup Project, said on a Friday conference call with reporters.
DOE is spending about $4 million to $5 million a month on IWTU, Zimmerman said Friday. The agency could face daily fines of $3,600 from the state of Idaho for every day that passes after the Sept. 30 deadline to start up the plant. After March 30, 2017, daily fines could increase to $6,000 a day, said Zimmerman.
An Idaho official would not immediately confirm or deny whether the state planned to hit DOE with fines.
“The agreement is still in place, so we have all of the options that are laid out in that consent order agreement,” Natalie Clough, hazardous waste compliance manager for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, said in a Sunday telephone interview. “That includes the daily penalties if they fail to start treating waste by Sept. 30. Up until then, we’ll be evaluating all of our options.”
Fluor could not immediately be reached for comment.
IWTU, a so-called steam reformer, is designed to treat some 900,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste now stored in underground tanks by heating it up and distilling solids that can be packaged for permanent disposal. In March, the DOE inspector general reported the 53,000 square-foot facility, built by former Idaho cleanup prime contractor CH2M-WG Idaho, would likely breach its $571 million cost cap.
The facility has been complete since 2012, but during test runs with non-radioactive simulant liquid, has produced a solid substance known as wall scale, or bark, that clogs the machine, Zimmerman said. Furthermore, a critical IWTU component known as a ring header might need to be replaced. DOE has a spare on site, which would take a month or three to install, Zimmerman said.