Idaho has now imposed about $9.16 million in fines against the Department of Energy for failing to treat sodium-bearing liquid radioactive waste at the Idaho National Laboratory with the long-delayed Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, a state official said this week.
Depending on how COVID-19 plays out, the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) could start radioactive operations in June, a DOE spokesperson told Weapons Complex Monitor. Before starting hot operations, IWTU needs to complete its final major test run, which should happen in the first quarter of 2021, according to the DOE spokesperson in Idaho and Brian English, hazardous waste permits supervisor with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.
But IWTU’s overall schedule has already lost “at least six months” to COVID-related issues, including vendor availability and social distancing requirements necessary for all the close-quarters work IWTU personnel are doing, the DOE spokesperson in Idaho said.
Fluor Idaho is now in charge of IWTU, which will treat 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing waste held in underground storage tanks at the laboratory. The waste came from Idaho National Laboratory’s reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from the U.S. Navy’s reactors. Based on encouraging test results at the 53,000-square foot IWTU in 2019, Fluor and DOE had anticipated starting up IWTU this year, until the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the Government Accountability Office reported in September 2019, IWTU has a troubled history.
Contractor CH2M-WG Idaho finished major construction of the IWTU in 2012, but the unit never worked as planned. Since 2016, DOE’s current Idaho cleanup contractor, Fluor Idaho, has made significant changes to the original plant. This includes modifications to the primary reaction vessel, called the denitration mineralization reformer.
Meanwhile, with the sodium-bearing waste not yet being converted into a solid, granular substance and placed into canisters, Idaho is still imposing penalties under a 2015 modification to a notice of noncompliance with a 1995 legal settlement between the state, DOE and the Navy over spent fuel. The penalties started at $3,600 per day beginning in 2015, before being raised to $6,000 daily in March 2017 under the noncompliance orders.
The $9.16 million represents the total financial penalties assessed by the state as of Oct. 31, Natalie Creed, the hazardous waste bureau chief for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, wrote in a Monday email.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management continues to retire much of the debt, about $7.86 million so far, by financing or performing supplemental environmental projects within Idaho.
