No injuries or external contamination detected from incident at DOE-Idaho Site
UPDATE 4:40 p.m. Fluor Idaho, LLC. News Release:
Emergency operations were terminated following an incident at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC) Accelerated Retrieval Project (ARP 5) containment structure at the Department of Energy’s Idaho site.
No injuries were reported nor environmental contamination detected from the incident Wednesday evening involving containers of radioactive waste in the building. A drum experienced elevated temperature and pressure resulting in its seal breaching and smoldering inside the drum as air contacted the material.
Emergency operations were terminated at 10:35 a.m. MDT Thursday. Plans are being made to enter the facility and gather more information for a recovery plan to be completed by Fluor Idaho, the environmental cleanup contractor at the Idaho Site.
All external surveys detected no radioactivity outside the building. The facility is engineered with specially designed high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, which are designed to trap contamination. No employees were in the building nor the surrounding area when the incident occurred.
Three Idaho National Laboratory firefighters responded to a fire alarm at 11:35 p.m. MDT Wednesday, extinguished the smoldering material and separated the drum from a dozen others nearby. Upon exiting the facility, the firefighters were assessed and had some minor external radioactive contamination that was subsequently removed from their skin.
Initial assessments indicated the workers received no detectable internal contamination. As a precaution, all three firefighters were transported to INL medical facilities in Idaho Falls for further assessment to confirm no internal uptake.
UPDATE: EOC NEWS RELEASE
The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Fire Department responded to a fire alarm late Wednesday night at the Accelerated Retrieval Project (ARP 5) containment structure at the Idaho Cleanup Project’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC) involving release of material from a drum on the Department of Energy’s INL Site.
There were no reports of injuries. The surrounding area is being monitored, and no contamination has been detected outside the facility. The ARP 5 facility is engineered with specially designed high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, which are designed to trap contamination.
There was an indication that a waste drum inside the facility had an elevated temperature and was breached. INL’s Emergency Operations Center and Joint Information Center were both activated and remain operational in support of Fluor Idaho, the clean-up contractor at the Idaho Site.
Employees are reporting to work per their normal shifts. Some operations at RWMC are temporarily restricted.
The Radioactive Waste Management Complex is located 55 miles west of Idaho Falls on the DOE’s INL Site. Since the 1950s, the Department of Energy (DOE) has used the RWMC to manage, store, and dispose of waste contaminated with radioactive and hazardous elements generated in national defense and research programs. The RWMC comprises 177 acres and includes three main areas: The operations and administration area, the Subsurface Disposal Area, and the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project. ARP 5 is used to process waste drums for eventual shipment out of the state of Idaho.
ORIGINAL STORY:
The U.S. Department of Energy has activated its Emergency Operations Center due to a reported incident at the Idaho Cleanup Project’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex.
Fluor Idaho personnel are responding to investigate the incident. Officials said there is no risk to the public at this time, but declined to describe the nature of the incident.
The EOC said state, county, and tribal officials were being notified.
Since early 2005, the Idaho Cleanup Project contractor has been removing plutonium-contaminated filters, graphite molds, sludges containing solvents and oxidized or depleted uranium from seven pits. The work is aimed at protecting the Snake River Plain Aquifer.
