Three reactors at nuclear lab to be razed

IDAHO FALLS – Three nuclear reactors at Idaho National Laboratory, instrumental in leading to the understanding and construction of more advanced reactors, will likely be dismantled beginning this fall.

“Projects only live so long,” Emory “Sam” Mobley, who worked on all three reactors during his career, told the Post Register. “They all ran a long time, and so it was good while it lasted, but they can’t go on forever.”

The reactors to be dismantled are the Power Burst Facility reactor, the Materials Testing Reactor and the Engineering Test Reactor. The work is expected to be completed by 2012.

CWI, the contractor for the Department of Energy’s Idaho Cleanup Project at the 890-square-mile federal research area in eastern Idaho, is responsible for taking the reactors apart.

Debris will either remain at the site in a special lined area, or be shipped to other sites, including a permanent underground repository in New Mexico.

“It really depends, when we get in there, what the waste types are,” Amy Lientz, vice president of communications for CWI, told the Associated Press on Friday. State officials, the Shoshone-Bannock tribes and the public will get to comment on the plan to dismantle the reactors and dispose of the materials.