Idaho, feds announce lab cleanup deal
BOISE – The U.S. Department of Energy will unearth a significant amount of transuranic radioactive waste from the Idaho National Laboratory site, adding billions to cleanup costs but settling a dispute over just how much waste a 1995 agreement forces the federal government to remove.
The amount to be removed would fill three Olympic-size swimming pools.
Gov. Butch Otter and James Rispoli, Energy Department assistant secretary for environmental management, along with former Idaho Govs. Phil Batt and Cecil Andrus, announced the new pact Tuesday at separate events in Boise and Idaho Falls.
Andrus and Batt were instrumental in forging the original agreement more than a decade ago, fearing that radioactive and toxic Cold War garbage shipped to the 890-square-mile nuclear reservation from sites including the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Golden, Colo., would spread to the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer and eventually the Snake River.
Tuesday’s announcement came after U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge ruled in May 2006 that the DOE must remove all “transuranic” waste – rags, gloves and dirt contaminated with radioactive material like plutonium – from INL by 2018, unless it’s unsafe to do so. A federal appeals court upheld Lodge’s decision in March.
“At my advanced age, I was afraid I’d get buried before the buried waste left here,” Batt said, adding the new agreement was in the spirit of his original intentions to ship the waste out of Idaho. “It’s time to carry out the judge’s orders to the best of our abilities. I don’t think it would be in the interest of the state of Idaho to continue on with these lawsuits.”
The Energy Department had argued unsuccessfully that transuranic waste in rotting barrels dumped into pits and trenches between 1954 and 1970 wasn’t covered under the cleanup pact and should stay put.
Kathleen Trevor, who has been involved in the cleanup for 15 years and heads up Idaho’s INL oversight office, said the agreement preserves the state’s right to return to Lodge if future disagreements with the DOE surface.
But given the degraded state of much of the waste, the risk of radiation and hazards from waste that burns on contact with air, targeted removal of waste makes more sense than a wholesale cleanup, she said.
“After thorough technical, legal and policy review, this is the right thing to do,” Trevor said.
According to the settlement, the Department of Energy would remove no less than 7,485 cubic meters of waste from between 5.7 acres and 7.4 acres at the INL. The waste will be sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Crews will target only waste that’s most likely contaminated with plutonium-tainted transuranic elements, uranium and chemical solvents that could move easily should they enter the region’s groundwater.
Remaining waste, located in a landfill in the southeastern corner of the INL site, would be capped to keep out rain and snow. Removal won’t be completed until 2020 and capping is slated to be finished in 2027. Removal could cost $300 million or more per acre, not including shipping the waste to New Mexico or capping and monitoring remaining waste, the DOE’s Rispoli said.