The Department of Energy acknowledged late Thursday it will miss the latest state deadline for starting radiological operations of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory but still expects to start treating sodium-bearing waste this fall.
The federal agency has requested an extension beyond the current Friday Sept. 30 deadline for using the steam reforming technology at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) to fill up the first canister with granular waste, a DOE spokesperson said via email.
The request has been filed with the state of Idaho, the spokesperson said in reply to an inquiry from Exchange Monitor. “We look forward to beginning radiological operations later this fall.”
Following a conditional approval from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality in July 2021, the state gave DOE and its Jacobs-led contractor until Sept. 30, 2022 to convert its first canister of liquid high-level radioactive sodium bearing waste into a more stable granular form for eventual disposal.
The prior state deadline for IWTU startup was June 30, 2021, but Idaho agreed to extend the deadline due to delays associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the Sept. 30 date, the current set of state deadlines specify IWTU produce its first 100 canisters of granular waste by the end of the 2022 calendar year.
During last week’s National Cleanup Workshop, hosted by Energy Communities Alliance in Arlington, Va., the program manager and CEO of Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition, Ty Blackford, said work crews had basically taken apart much of the plant and then reassembled it a couple of times this year in preparation for startup.
The state of Idaho continues to impose daily financial penalties, the assessed tab having reached $10 million, until the IWTU starts turning out canisters of granular waste.
The history of the facility, designed to solidify 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing liquid waste, is a long and difficult one and Blackford has said his team and DOE are eager to get over the hump. In late July the IWTU finished a 65-day confirmatory run using a simulant in place of radioactive material.
An earlier unsuccessful dress rehearsal started in December 2021 but was bedeviled by everything from equipment issues to problems with a steady nitrogen supply to worker error that triggered an automatic plant shutdown. As a result, DOE decided a fresh start was in order and commenced the do-over trial run in May.
Construction of the IWTU was first completed back in 2012, when the then-contractor led by CH2M could not get the plant to run as designed. The following Idaho Cleanup Contractor, Fluor Idaho spent years revamping and re-engineering major components of the plant. Fluor Idaho did some shorter test runs before turning the project over to its successor, Idaho Environmental Coalition in January.
