I have blogged in the past about the conflict between the federal government and the State of Idaho over cleanup of radioactive waste at the Idaho National Laboratory. The INL was established in 1949 as federal government nuclear research and development site. It covers about nine hundred square miles and employs about four thousand people. Over the years nuclear waste was generated from research projects, spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, and nuclear weapons development. There are hundreds of tons of spent nuclear fuel, almost a million gallons of high-level liquid waste, five thousand cubic yards of dried and condensed solid waste, eighty five thousand cubic meters of transuranic wastes and half a million cubic yards of low level waste in lined and unlined pits.
In 1989, the INL was designated as a Superfund cleanup site. In 1995, after court battles, an agreement was signed between the Department of Energy and the State of Idaho that there would be no shipments of commercial spent fuel to the INL until all existing waste had been dealt with. There were also limits set on shipment of other types of waste. All transuranic waste was to be removed by 2018. All high level waste and waste from spent nuclear fuel was to be removed by 2025. By 2013, no high level waste or spent nuclear fuel waste had been removed. Over forty tons of spent nuclear waste from government reactors was shipped in. Over forty tons of transuranic waste was shipped out. Court battles and waste cleanup and removal continued at the INL.
In order to speed up the removal of nuclear waste at the INL, in February of 2016, the Department of Energy awarded a new contract which combined two of the existing cleanup projects to Flour Idaho, LLC. The Idaho Treatment Group and CH2M-WG Idaho had been working on the two projects. Fluor spent three months learning about the operation from the two previous contractors. Operational responsibility for cleaning up the nuclear waste at the INL was officially transferred to Fluor Idaho on June 1st of this year. The five year contract with Fluor Idaho is worth about a billion and a half dollars.
Fluor hired most of the personnel who had worked for the two contractors that Fluor replaced. This had the benefit of keeping various working teams intact and permitted a continuity of operation. After a couple of days of transition, normal operations were resumed. Fluor has reported that although they have only been in control since June 1st, the productivity of the cleanup projects has already improved. Fluor has pledged that they would maintain a culture of transparency with respect to employee input about problems or ways to improve efficiency.
Fluor has pledge to follow a schedule for the retrieval and packaging of some nuclear waste that is currently buried in pits that is more ambitious than the waste disposal schedule mandated by Idaho and the U.S. Department of Energy. Fluor has plans to remove spent nuclear fuel rods from their current cooling pools and store them in dry casks.
One of the most difficult tasks facing Fluor is the treatment of almost a million gallons of liquid radioactive waste at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit. The treatment of the liquid waste was supposed to be completed by 2012 but five years later the work is still not done because of many technical problems. Fluor has previously worked on similar systems in other states and has brought in an experienced team to work on the IWTU at INL.
Hopefully, Fluor will do better with the cleanup work at the INL than previous contractors. Time will tell.
