A large fire has prompted evacuation of nonessential employees at several major nuclear operations at the U.S. Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory.
Sites affected by the evacuation include the Advanced Test Reactor, Naval Reactors Facility, Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, and Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center, according to a post on the INL website.
Some nonessential employees were working at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex on Wednesday. Nonessential employees are considered nonemergency workers not directly connected with safe operation of a facility, INL officials said.
The fire, which ignited Monday, is almost entirely based on the 890-square-mile INL property, said Shelly Norman, a spokeswoman with the lab’s emergency joint information center.
Virtually all operations at INL have been suspended or scaled back early Tuesday, according to Norman. Probably more than 1,000 DOE and contractor employees have been either evacuated or told to stay home, she said. “It’s very smoky out here.”
The Sheep Fire began following a lightning strike ignited grassland at approximately 6:30 p.m. local time Monday, INL emergency operations spokesman Joe Campbell said during a press conference Tuesday.
“It’s a very unpredictable and rapidly changing” situation, Campbell said.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and INL fire crews are working together to fight the blaze, which had burned roughly 90,000 acres as of Tuesday evening. No injuries have been reported, Norman said.
Radiation monitoring so far shows no risk to the public from airborne contamination. No facilities were endangered as of Tuesday , INL officials said during the press conference.
The fire is located south of Highway 33 and north of Highway 20, near the Idaho National Laboratory Site’s eastern boundary, according to East Idaho News.
Fluor Idaho, the DOE cleanup contractor for the lab, did not immediately return a request for comment regarding the fire. The Energy Department directed all media calls to the INL emergency operations center.