Collaboration, Communication Help Idaho Progress on Major Construction Project

Crews move the first truss into position over the partially constructed storage building. Once completed, the building will store sodium-bearing waste processed by the Idaho National Laboratory Site’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) crews at the Idaho Cleanup Project have benefited from collaboration, proper planning, and effective communication to advance toward completing a major construction project at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU).

Beginning in 2023, construction crews worked to build a second 20,000-square-foot concrete storage facility for liquid radioactive waste processed by IWTU, which surpassed an EM priority earlier this year.

Recent efforts have focused on laying large steel trusses on the partially constructed facility. Trusses provide structure for roofs, span long distances and transfer the weight of heavy loads to engineered supports in a building.

About 30 workers placed seven large steel trusses in five days. Each of those trusses weigh nearly 25,000 pounds and span 130 feet in length.

Kory Edelmayer, senior construction manager at IWTU, recognized the difficulty of the task but credited the crew and their planning efforts as contributors to success. The project applied lessons learned from the commercial industry to ensure safe emplacement of the trusses.

“Our crews are highly skilled and very experienced,” said Edelmayer. “The buildup and planning, including assembling the trusses and numbering them in an efficient sequence, was critical to moving through this phase quickly.”

While the crew’s planning efforts helped them complete the phase quicker than expected, Edelmayer recognized that collaboration from spent nuclear fuel crews at the neighboring Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center was invaluable.

“We were able to borrow a second crane, which helped us place and secure trusses,” said Edelmayer. “Without this second crane and the support from our colleagues, it may have taken twice as long to place and install the trusses and could have resulted in increased crane costs if the second, in-house crane was not available.”

Safety and effective communication are crucial to construction of the storage facility.

“This is one of the largest construction projects at the Idaho Cleanup Project over the last 20 years, second only to the IWTU construction, and I am amazed by the cooperation and teamwork of this crew,” Edelmayer said. “From our operators to our iron workers, everyone had a role to play and executed their job to the highest standard. Their commitment to safety and the mission allowed us to complete this phase of the project without incident.”

Workers decorate the highest piece of steel on the structure with an American flag, an ironworker’s tradition known as topping out.

Once construction is complete, the second storage facility will house vaults full of stainless steel canisters containing sodium-bearing waste processed through the IWTU.

In coming months, workers will complete electrical work, construct a hot shop and a breezeway connection to the existing product storage building, and install the roof.

Idaho Environmental Coalition, EM’s contractor at the INL Site, expects to complete construction of the storage building in 2025.

-Contributor: Carter Harrison