There is an eight hundred and ninety square mile Federal site in the desert in southeastern Idaho which includes that Idaho National Laboratory, the nation’s leading federal nuclear research lab. The site is located about fifty miles west of the city of Idaho Falls. It has been used by the U.S. government for storage and disposal of nuclear waste from nuclear weapons development and research since the 1950s. There have been a series of court battles between the State of Idaho and the Federal government over the cleanup of the site. Idaho officials were fearful that Idaho was becoming a national nuclear waste dump.
The Radioactive Waste Management complex occupies seventy-seven acres of the remote desert site. It includes an administration area, the Subsurface Disposal Area and the Transuranic Storage Area. Fluor Idaho is a contractor for the DoE who is employing more than seven hundred people to clean up the site
The Subsurface Disposal Area occupies ninety-seven acres of the site. It has been used for disposing of low-level hazardous and transuranic waste which includes such items as work clothing, rags, machine parts and tools that have been contaminated by uranium, plutonium, americium and other radioactive elements. Most of the transuranic waste in the Subsurface Disposal Area was generated during nuclear weapons production at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado.
The Transuranic Storage Area occupies about fifty-six acres. Containers of transuranic waste sit on asphalt pads and are covered by an earth berm. Workers are retrieving eighty-five thousand cubic yards of waste that is being prepared for shipment to the U.S. geological repository at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Yesterday, Federal officials activated an Emergency Operations center. Crews were sent to investigate an incident that was reported at the site. The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it is gathering information about the incident.
A fifty-five gallon barrel of radioactive sludge cracked open at the complex. A fire alarm was triggered which resulted in the arrival of three Idaho National Laboratory firefighters who extinguished the smoldering barrel and removed it from proximity to a dozen other barrels nearby. The current theory of what caused the barrel to rupture is that the waste in the barrel heated it and ignited particles of uranium.
Emergency workers detected a small amount of radioactivity on the skins of the firefighters after they dealt with the ruptured barrel. The firefighters were taken to a medical facility and the radioactive material on their skin was washed off. Fortunately, they did not inhale any radioactive material because they were protected by their suits. No radioactive material was detected outside the building. The officials said that there was no danger to the public.
Federal officials said that this was the first case of a barrel rupturing but there might be more. Bad record keeping at the complex means that they are not sure exactly what is in the barrels of fluids and solvents left over from nuclear weapons production.
The DoE said that it was their standard practice to activate the Emergency Operations Center to coordinate incident responders when there is a report of an incident. State, county and tribal officials were notified of the incident by the DoE.
