State reaches agreement with DOE to resolve INL hazardous waste violations
The U.S. Department of Energy will pay a $648,000 civil penalty and develop a schedule to permanently remove three 300,000-gallon underground tanks.
The DOE received a notice of violation Jan. 6 for noncompliance with a 1992 consent order. The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality said the violations resulted from delays associated with removing liquid waste from the tanks.
The tanks are located at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center “tank farm.” The site is designed to hold liquid wastes from reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and associated decontamination activities.
The Department of Energy has closed seven of the 11 tanks, but three continue to store a total of approximately 850,000 gallons of liquid waste that do not meet current regulatory standards.
According to the consent order, if DOE fails to meet any deadline, it will be required to pay a stipulated penalty of $1,200 for each violation for each nonempty tank for each day in noncompliance (up to a total of $3,600 per day per violation) for the first 180 days after the deadline. The penalty will increase to $2,000 per day for each violation up to a total of $6,000 until the requirement is met.
A treatment facility known as the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit has been constructed at the INL and is designed to convert the remaining liquid waste into a solid, granular material in preparation for disposal elsewhere. Delays during construction and testing of the IWTU treatment facility prevented DOE from meeting previous deadlines to empty the remaining tanks. If DOE determines that operation of the IWTU is not feasible, DOE must pay an additional stipulated penalty of $2 million.
