Facility treated over 1,700 gallons of waste per day — nearly triple the rate of previous run
Office of Environmental Management
March 4, 2025
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Facility treated over 1,700 gallons of waste per day — nearly triple the rate of previous run
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — A radioactive liquid waste treatment facility at the Idaho National Laboratory Site recently completed its most successful run to date by treating more than 211,000 gallons of material and meeting two critical milestones with the state of Idaho.
The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) has since entered an outage to conduct routine maintenance following the five-month waste treatment run. Following the outage, the IWTU will return to normal radiological operations.
To date, the IWTU has converted more than 279,000 gallons of waste. The facility was constructed to treat approximately 900,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste from three nearby underground storage tanks to convert it to a safer, granulated waste form.
“I’m always impressed with the level of professionalism exhibited by all IWTU staff,” U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) Manager Mark Brown said. “The most recent run was a showcase of their expertise, and I thank them for their commitment to safety and operational compliance.”
Integrated Waste Treatment Unit operators monitor plant conditions from the control room.
In its most recent run, the IWTU met the 2024 and 2025 waste treatment milestones with the state, which requires the average annual treatment of about 128,000 gallons based on a three-year rolling average.
“The IWTU’s performance has significantly improved,” said Dan Coyne, president of ICP contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition. “During the latest run, the facility reliably treated more than 1,700 gallons of liquid waste per day, which is almost three times the treatment rate achieved during the previous run.”
He added: “Our operations and maintenance crews deserve a great deal of credit for keeping the facility within its ideal operating environment and troubleshooting the plant issues as they arose.”
During the outage, crews will replace granulated activated carbon bed media, which capture mercury in the off-gas before the emissions are discharged to the IWTU’s exhaust stack. They also will replace feed nozzles in the facility’s primary reaction vessel, and conduct other routine maintenance.
The liquid waste being treated by IWTU was a by-product of decontamination activities between spent nuclear fuel reprocessing runs at the site’s Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center. Reprocessing ended in 1992.
-Contributor: Erik Simpson
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