Already offline for most of 2025, the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, will remain out of service until early 2026, a DOE spokesperson said this week.
After DOE and Amentum-led contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition returned the facility to operation July 17, the facility shut down five days later on July 22, according to a late-August staff report for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
After work crews took the plant offline they “noted high differential temperature across the Carbon Reduction Reformer (CRR), which is a key part of the steam-reforming technology,” according to the report.
The August DNFSB report did not, however, provide any clues into how long the outage might last. But on Monday, a DOE spokesman answered that question submitted previously by Exchange Monitor.
“The current IWTU outage is expected to last until early 2026,” the spokesperson said. “Following the outage, the facility will resume radiological operations to build on the 279,000 gallons of sodium-bearing waste already treated.”
The plant built to solidify 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste into a granular form for long-term storage and disposal has been out of service for most of this year. After years of delay, the plant came online in April 2023 and has experienced a number of glitches since startup.