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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Idaho National Lab Cleanup Will Mean More Waste for WIPP


Associated Press
      IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — The Idaho Cleanup Project is getting ready to enter its third phase, and this time crews are exploring how to deal with thousands of gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste stored for decades on the Idaho National Laboratory's southern boundary.
    The U.S. Department of Energy project proposes removing 2,200 cubic meters of waste from radioactive waste storage sites, repackaging it and sending it to the agency's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
    An analysis released Monday by the agency and CH2M-WG, the contractor hired to do the work, offers two options for dealing with the waste, each with different costs and health and environmental benefits.
    The preferred option calls for exhuming thousands of boxes and drums loaded with contaminants. The other option, labeled the "No Action" alternative, calls for simple monitoring of the site. The report concludes no action would be cheaper, estimated at about $2.5 million, and would lead to less public and worker exposure to hazardous wastes in the short term.
    Removing the waste is estimated at $70.4 million but addresses long term risks to public health and the environment, the report states.
    "Without remedial action, the (retrieval site) poses unacceptable risk to human health and the environment," the report says. "The No Action alternative offers no reduction in toxicity, mobility, or volume of contaminants ... and does not mitigate the release of (contaminants) from the buried waste."
    The $2.9 billion Idaho Cleanup Project, paid for by the DOE, began in 2005 and is slated for completion by 2012. During the last three years, crews have removed contaminants from two pits, including plutonium contaminated filters, graphite sludge, oxidized uranium and solvent wastes.
    Much of the waste buried at the 890-square-mile federal nuclear research complex was shipped between 1954 and 1970 from a plant in Rocky Flats, Colo., that manufactured parts for nuclear weapons. That plant is no longer in existence.
    The majority of items stored in the pits are protective material that were exposed to radioactivity or other hazards, Idaho Cleanup Project spokesman Joe Campbell said.
    So far, cleanup crews have excavated more than 11,000 cubic meters of waste from two pits.
    The agency is taking public comment on the report for the next phase of cleanup until July 23.

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