Idaho Waste Treatment Plant Enters Its Longest Test Run to Date

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – EM and cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho recently launched a 50-day demonstration of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) as it treats a non-radioactive simulant that mimics waste from an underground tank farm at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory Site.

The demonstration is designed to achieve long-term, stable operations of the plant designed to treat the tank farm’s 900,000 gallons of nuclear waste. This run also challenges the facility by testing its ability to recover from off-normal events, such as temperature and pressure variations. Additionally, the run will provide data to help finalize remaining environmental permits and confirm the plant’s operating conditions.

“Like prior demonstration runs, we expect to challenge the plant to shake out any remaining issues,” said Archie Benner, Fluor Idaho nuclear facility manager for the IWTU. “Our goal, however, is to resolve those problems while keeping the plant at normal operating pressure and temperature and demonstrate the plant’s robustness.”

Workers conducted a previous IWTU demonstration over 30 days last summer. In that run, the facility successfully converted more than 53,000 gallons of liquid simulant into a dry, granular solid using steam reforming technology.

That test proved that modifications to the primary reaction vessel – called the Denitration Mineralization Reformer (DMR) – were successful. The bottom of the DMR had been modified from a spherical to a conical shape to better promote the fluidization of billions of tiny beads necessary to convert liquid waste to a granular solid.