Transfer Of Fuel Rods Begun At Lab Shift To Dry Storage At Ineel Comes Months Ahead Of Talks

The Energy Department has moved the first spent fuel rods from storage in water tanks at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory to temporary dry storage.

The transfer of the 66 spent fuel elements from two reactors at the INEEL’s Test Reactor Area was completed last month. It is the first transfer through the newly opened fuel canning station.

The shift to dry storage comes 27 months before the government is required to begin even negotiating a schedule for transfer of all spent fuel from water to dry storage under the unprecedented deal it cut two years ago with Gov. Phil Batt.

Until that deal was cut, the state was operating under a court-order requiring the Energy Department to at least move all highly radioactive spent fuel rods from a deteriorating underwater storage facility to what was then one of the most modern underwater storage buildings in the nation.

Batt’s deal required all water-stored fuel rods, no matter what condition the facility was in, to be moved to dry storage by 2024, and Assistant Energy Secretary Al Alm said a year ago that transfer of all waste remaining in the high-risk underwater facilities would be completed to dry or secure wet storage areas by 2006.

Defueling the two reactors at INEEL took 2-1/2 years, officials said. They can now be prepared for decommissioning.

Meanwhile, the government had to shut down the facility that converts highly radioactive liquid waste into a granular material called calcine because of a nitric acid leak.

The leak was in a shielded room and posed no danger to workers or the environment, the Energy Department said. Repairs should be complete by month’s end.

The New Waste Calcining Facility is converting the liquid to a more stable form under the Batt agreement. It has processed nearly half of the 287,000 gallons of nonsodium bearing liquid that most be turned into granules by the middle of next year.