The Department of Energy and a Jacobs-led contractor have started tearing down shuttered support buildings at the Idaho National Laboratory used for a Naval reactor prototype for the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine.
The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management announced in February it would oversee deactivation and demolition of the Submarine 1st Generation Westinghouse prototype facility for the DOE’s Office of Naval Reactors.
In a DOE press release last week, Mike Swartz, a manager for Jacobs-led cleanup contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition, started dismantling buildings B608 and 625.
The Submarine 1st Generation Westinghouse reactor shut down in 1989 was the prototype power system for the USS NAUTILUS, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, DOE said.
The 10,000-square-foot buildings were used for maintenance and training, the Environmental Management office said in the release.
Ordinary demolition rubble will be taken to the Idaho National Laboratory’s Central Facilities Area Landfill for disposal, while contaminated debris will go to Environmental Management’s 510,000-cubic-yard, onsite lined landfill for Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act material, DOE said.
Sometime this week, the state and U.S. Environmental Management will publish an engineering evaluation and cost analysis for public comment on alternatives for the major prototype facilities at the Naval reactor facility, DOE said in the release.
In various public forums over the past year, Environmental Management supervisors have said the cleanup office is increasingly taking charge of remediation of facilities closed by not just the National Nuclear Security Administration, but other federal entities as well.
