Idaho’s attorney general last week reiterated his stance that no spent nuclear fuel should be sent to the Idaho National Laboratory until the Energy Department begins treating liquid waste using the long-delayed Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), the local Post Register newspaper reported last week.
In a Thursday meeting of the DOE-chartered Idaho National Laboratory Citizens Advisory Board, state Attorney General Lawrence Wasden again cited his authority under the 1995 Settlement Agreement between Idaho, DOE, and the U.S. Navy to bar a shipment of spent nuclear fuel to Idaho for a DOE research project until the agency starts up the IWTU, the Post Register reported.
Wasden took the hard line last year after DOE sought a waiver, which Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R) supports, to send the spent fuel to the site despite the blown deadline. The material would be used for DOE’s high-burnup fuel study, a decade-long investigation conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute into how such fuel affects the interior of dry cask storage containers.
After failing to meet a regulatory deadline with the state to start up IWTU by Sept. 30, Idaho began fining DOE $3,600 daily. Daily fines at that level will continue until March 30, after which the penalty could increase to $6,000 a day.
IWTU, substantially complete since 2012 but inactive following technical troubles during test runs, was built by former Idaho-site cleanup contractor CH2M-WG Idaho to treat 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing liquid waste left over from Cold War-era nuclear fuel reprocessing.
Fluor Idaho took over IWTU this year from CH2M-WG Idaho, under a five-year DOE Idaho Cleanup Project Core and Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project worth nearly $1.5 billion. IWTU is expected to cost in excess of $570 million.