Wind levels building under construction at NRF

Wind gusts clocked to 70 miles per hour brought down a steel structure building under construction at the Nuclear Reactors Facility at approximately 5:15 pm Sunday. The facility is located on the Idaho National Laboratory reservation and is under contract with the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.

The steel infrastructure was being built to support a single story building about an acre in size. The project is an extension of an existing building within the highly secure area.

The NRF mission is to receive, examine, and process naval spent nuclear fuel.The new structure will provide a weather enclosure for the interim storage of naval spent nuclear fuel. NRF spokesman Rick Nieslanik explained, “it will store containers packaged in a robust container that are contained within large concrete overpacks.”

No construction crews were on duty at the time of the collapse and there were no injuries. Officials are still evaluating the extent of damage and do not have a good estimate of the cost of the damage. Nieslanik says there is enough capacity within the existing building that the collapse should have minimal short term impact.