The Energy Department will soon begin retrieving highly radioactive calcine waste stored for years at the Idaho National Laboratory.
The initial phase of the retrieval project, expected to cost DOE close to $50 million and last through 2022, involves moving the powdered calcine waste out of the oldest No. 1 storage facility and into a newer No. 6 facility located nearby, Mark Shaw, a DOE project manager for the Idaho Cleanup Project, told the Idaho National Laboratory Site Environmental Management Citizens Advisory Board on Thursday.
The No. 6 facility has available space for more calcine, and officials hope to clean and close No. 1 under Resource Conservation and Recovery Act requirements, Shaw said.
The project, to involve retrieving and moving 220 cubic meters of calcine, will be the initial step toward extractubg all 4,400 cubic meters of calcine stored in six concrete silo-like facilities at INL’s Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC), Shaw said. Under the terms of its 1995 nuclear waste cleanup settlement agreement with the state of Idaho, DOE must have the calcine ready to ship to an underground repository outside the state by 2035.
The calcine was generated from a treatment process used at the desert site between 1963 and 2000, which turned high-level liquid radioactive waste — the remnants of spent nuclear fuel reprocessing — into the more environmentally safe powder calcine form. The calcine has been stored in more than 40 stainless steel bins, which are located inside the concrete storage facilities.
Shaw said cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho aims to move the calcine using a piping system that will be constructed between the No. 1 and No. 6 storage facilities. Lessons learned on the project will help officials determine how to retrieve the rest of the calcine in later years. The stainless steel bins and concrete storage facilities were not built for easy access, which will make the retrieval project challenging, Shaw said.
