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U.S. Department of Energy Keeps Its Cleanup Commitments
By ELIZABETH SELLERS
As significant progress continues on cleanup of legacy
environmental challenges at the Idaho National Laboratory, there are two
points I’d like to emphasize:
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| Workers sort previously-buried waste. |
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| Inside of
underground waste storage tank after cleaning was completed
ready for grouting to begin. |
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- The U.S. Department of Energy is keeping its
promises to Idahoans. In the last 20 years, DOE has met, on time or
ahead of schedule, 632 of 636 cleanup milestones under agreements with
its regulators; the other four milestones were subsequently met, or
restructured as a result of changed conditions.
- DOE, its contractors and its regulators are working together
to make substantial progress in the three areas of most concern to Idahoans:
removing and shipping targeted buried waste, closing underground waste
storage tanks, and shipping stored waste out of state.
Taken together, these
actions constitute continued focus and progress in our commitment to
safeguard the Snake River Plain Aquifer, which underlies much of the INL.
Let me
expand on my second point. Under its contract with DOE, our cleanup
contractor, CWI, is actively engaged in digging up targeted wastes
contaminated with radioactive elements and hazardous chemicals that were
buried at the INL’s Radioactive
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| Shipment of waste leaving the INL
to WIPP for final disposal. |
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Waste Management Complex between 1954 and 1970. CWI is
committed to excavate targeted buried waste from 2.8 acres of the burial
ground, and has excavated over 2,200 containers of buried waste so far.
This waste is being characterized, repackaged and shipped to the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a permanent repository in New Mexico.
In addition, since 1996, about 230,000 pounds of
organic chemicals have been removed from the burial ground using vapor
vacuum extraction units, brought to the surface and destroyed. These are
“interim actions,” taken to address concerns about the Snake River Plain
Aquifer.
Additionally, DOE recently submitted to our
regulators a proposed plan that outlines its recommendations for addressing
the remainder of the buried waste. Once we incorporate comments from the
State of Idaho and the Environmental Protection Agency, the proposed plan
will be issued for public review and comment, later this year. If you’d like
more information on the studies that formed the basis for this proposed
plan, visit CWI’s web site at https://idahocleanupproject.com/.
Meanwhile, the INL Site’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Facility is the No. 1 shipper
of stored transuranic waste (plutonium-contaminated waste that was received
and stored at the Idaho site between 1970 and the late 1980s) to WIPP for
final disposal. Idaho has shipped over 18,000 cubic meters of transuranic
waste to WIPP. All of the stored waste will be shipped
to WIPP over the next several years.
Finally, CWI
has also successfully cleaned, and has completed 85 percent (to date) of the
grouting of 11 underground tanks that were used to store radioactive liquid
waste at the INL. About 900,000 gallons of liquid waste remain in three
other tanks. A waste treatment unit is under construction to process that
waste, and the remaining tanks will then be cleaned and grouted in time to
meet another DOE commitment – to clean and close all the waste tanks by
2012.
The Department of Energy recognizes that keeping
its cleanup commitments is the key to establishing trust for all our work at
the INL Site, including our cutting edge nuclear energy research. We invite
you to visit the site to see our progress firsthand. If you’re interested in
a tour, call our toll-free number at (800) 708-2680.
Elizabeth Sellers is the manager of the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Idaho Operations Office.
09/24/2007
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