A U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) official said Wednesday that a nuclear waste treatment plant in eastern Idaho will probably start operating in early December. The treatment plant was designed to treat nine hundred thousand gallons of sodium-bearing, radioactive waste. It has had numerous problems and setbacks.
Connie Flohr is manager of the Idaho Cleanup Project for the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Office of Environmental Management. She told Idaho officials that the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the department’s 890-square-mile site has successfully completed test runs with a simulant material. The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is also located on the DoE site.
Flohr said, “We have every confidence that we will be operating in December.” She was addressing members of the Leadership in Nuclear Energy Commission during an online meeting.
The commission makes recommendations to the governor regarding policies to support the viability and mission of the Idaho National Laboratory. The commission also deals with other nuclear industries in Idaho. Commission members are appointed by the governor. They include state lawmakers, local government elected officials, university officials and others.
The INL is one of DoE national labs. It is the nation’s top advanced nuclear energy research laboratory. It is also one of Idaho’s largest employers with about five thousand workers. It is a huge economic driver in the state bringing in millions of federal research dollars.
The lab has a legacy of nuclear waste that the DoE has spent decades cleaning up. That effort includes the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit which is a fifty-three thousand square foot facility that cost more than five hundred million dollars to construct.
It has suffered numerous problems for years. Scientists have struggled with the highly complex problem of converting the liquid waste into a more easily managed granulated solid through the use of what is referred to as a ‘steam-reforming technology’.
The liquid waste at INL came from processing spent nuclear fuel to recover highly enriched uranium, The waste is in tanks above the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer that supplies water to cities and farms in the region. There is great concern in the area about possible radioactive contamination of the aquifer if the tanks lead.
The EoD has been paying fines to Idaho for missing the deadline to convert the liquid waste into solid material as stipulated in a 1995 agreement that was the culmination of a series of federal lawsuits. Idaho is preventing the department for bringing in research quantities of spent nuclear fuel to be studied at the lab because of the missed deadline.
A revamped schedule for the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit called for it to begin operations last September. However, Flohr said she asked the state for a six-month extension on that date. The DoE will make the next deadline if the treatment plant starts operating in December.
If the treatment plant is successful, the granulated waste will be stored at the plant in stainless steel canisters placed in concrete vaults. The waste will eventually be disposed of at a national geological repository. Unfortunately, no such repository currently exists and the soonest that such a repository may be available is 2050.