DOE-ID Bi-Weekly Summary
For the Period June 15 to July 5, 2010
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a regular summary of operations at DOE’s Idaho Site. It has been compiled in response to a request from stakeholders for more information on health, safety and environmental incidents at DOE facilities in Idaho. It also includes a brief summary of accomplishments at the site. The report is broken down by contractor: Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP), Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL). This summary will be sent to everyone on INL’s regular news release distribution list every other week. To be added to this distribution list, please call Brad Bugger at (208) 526-0833.
Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project
June 15: Management at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project was notified that preliminary bioassay results showed 15 employees had positive results for internal contamination. The level of the exposure was so low that reporting was not required, but because of the number of employees involved, the incident was categorized as a management concern until final sample results are obtained. (EM-ID—BBWI-AMWTF-2010-0013).
Operations Summary
Waste Shipments: Eighteen of 18 planned shipments of contact-handled transuranic waste from Idaho to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico were made for the week ending June 26, 2010. Twelve of the shipments contained exhumed waste from the Accelerated Retrieval Project. Twelve contact-handled transuranic waste shipments and two remote-handled transuranic waste shipments are scheduled for the week ending July 3, 2010.
Idaho Cleanup Project
Nothing to report.
Operations Summary
Decontamination and Decommissioning Work: At the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center, the last yard of grout was placed in the basement of CPP-601. A total of 19,725 yards of grout were placed in the basement corridors and process cells. This task was originally scheduled to be complete in late 2012, but American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding allowed acceleration of the completion to June 2010. Demolition of the remaining above grade structure is continuing and will be completed later this summer.
Idaho National Laboratory
June 15: A need for further safety analysis was determined at the Advanced Test Reactor. As part of ongoing review of the safety documentation at the reactor, it was determined the existing analysis does not look at what would happen in the unlikely event that all five experiment loops in the reactor failed during an earthquake. The preliminary analysis showed that this accident is already enveloped by other accidents in the unlikely category and it does not have any affect on safe reactor operation (NE-ID—BEA-ATR-2010-0009).
Operations Summary
First ATRNSUF Experiments Undergoing Examination: Walid Mohamed, a North Carolina State University doctoral student, and his supervisor, NCSU nuclear engineering professor K.L. Murty, spent nearly two years preparing an experiment for insertion into Idaho National Laboratory’s Advanced Test Reactor. In March, the pair’s first samples came out of the ATR. And now Mohamed is getting to see how those samples held up under the reactor’s intense neutron irradiation. The NCSU team’s project was one of the first four chosen by INL’s ATR National Scientific User Facility back in 2008.