Idaho cleanup project marks milestone
Fluor Idaho, LLC, has completed a milestone in its charge to clean up waste buried at the U.S. Department of Energy Idaho Site west of Idaho Falls.
Workers recently packaged a total of 7,485 cubic meters of exhumed hazardous and radioactive waste. The material was generated at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production plant near Denver, then buried in Idaho in the 1950’s and 60’s.
The amount packaged is equivalent to nearly 36,000 55-gallon drums of material.
The work is about two years ahead of schedule, according to Fluor Idaho. The waste exhumation project, which began in 2005, is targeting removal of the highest concentrations of solvents and transuranic radionuclides (such as plutonium and americium) buried in the landfill.
The work satisfies a provision of a 2008 agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy, the state of Idaho and Environmental Protection Agency. It is intended to help protect the Snake River Plain Aquifer, the primary drinking and irrigation water source for more than 300,000 Idahoans.
It is a 5-year, $1.4 billion project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. To complete the agreement, two of nine different areas within the 97-acre area are left to be exhumed.
Fluor Idaho said the eighth area is now 56 percent complete. That work is being done within a steel-framed, fabric sided building and is expected to continue into 2017.
Construction of a building over the ninth and final area began in July and should be complete in 2017.
