A $1.4-billion facility that since April has solidified more than 60,000 gallons of sodium-bearing waste at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory received “minor superficial damage” from a crane accident in July, an agency spokesperson said Wednesday.

The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) was repaired and the IWTU maintenance crane was returned to service following the accident cited by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), the DOE spokesperson said. 

“No one was injured,” the spokesperson said via email to Exchange Monitor.

A combination of “administrative and human factors” contributed to the accident that damaged building components at the IWTU, according to the defense board’s report.

The operator was using the crane July 6 to lift sacks of petroleum coke for the Carbon Reduction Reformer to the second level of the IWTU, according to a DNFSB staff report dated Aug. 4 and posted online last week.

“While still wearing the belly box crane controller and looking for the necessary equipment to move the coke onto the second level of IWTU, the crane operator unknowingly adjusted the east-west switch on the box controller,” causing it to move in the wrong direction. 

As a result, “the crane cables then caught on a structural beam, causing the hook of the crane to snag a Unistrut.” UniStrut is a commercial name for a weld-free metal framing system frequently used in construction projects.

The IWTU is operated for DOE by the Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition. The facility’s mission is to solidify about 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing waste leftover from nuclear fuel reprocessing.