Fluor Idaho completes treating liquid wastes
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI/KIDK)-Fluor Idaho has finished processing a liquid waste they call ”squeezants.” The material is created when its squeezed out of waste drums.
The process will allow the material to be sent from the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to an out-of-state permanent disposal facility.
The radioactive and hazardous liquid was generated by the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) super-compactor. During the process, 55-gallon waste drums are crushed with 4 million pounds of force. That creates, what looks like, a 5-inch thick hockey puck.
The liquid is captured and moved to 4-liter jars and placed into 55-gallon drums.
“This was a great effort on the part of our crews to safely treat this material and prepare it for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) or other off-site facility for compliant disposal,” said Ross Langseth, Fluor Idaho operations manager at the INL site's Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project."
According to Fluor Idaho, workers at the AMWTP have retrieved, treated, packaged, certified, and shipped 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic and low-level wastes generated during nuclear weapons production at Rocky Flats, Colorado and other Cold War facilities.
