Idaho Facility Enclosure Serves Mission to Ship Transuranic Waste to WIPP

Workers prepare the inner contamination enclosure for waste handling operations at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project at the Idaho National Laboratory Site.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho - Cleanup crews at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Site are using a soft-sided enclosure - basically a building within a building - to open containers to treat and repackage transuranic waste inside of them, enabling the material to be compliantly shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico for permanent disposal.

U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition recently began repackaging waste in the recently upgraded contamination enclosure within the Waste Management Facility-635 building at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP).

Transuranic waste, a byproduct of the nation's nuclear defense program, consists of materials like clothing, rags, tools, gloves, debris and residue leftover from handling items with radioactive properties. These items are packaged and then secured inside solid, shielded vaults. The waste is then transported to the WIPP underground repository and emplaced in perpetuity.

At the INL Site, the metal-framed, soft-sided shelter is made of a heavy-duty, plastic-like canvas fabric called herculite. A reverse-flow ventilation system draws air from inside the enclosure toward HEPA filters, effectively containing contamination within the structure.

The upgraded enclosure is being used primarily to open drums or containers classified as newly generated waste. That is waste generated because of repackaging, treatment, retrieval, characterization, and handling of retrieved or stored legacy waste, or resulting from maintenance. The enclosure is outfitted with multiple power tools to allow employees dressed in personal protective equipment and respiratory protection to reduce the size of larger items.

"This upgraded enclosure is allowing us to continue our efforts to align small waste streams with the acceptance criteria and get them shipped," AMWTP Manager Dave Martin said.

The enclosure will likely be used for the duration of AMWTP's mission. The site continues to send eight shipments a week to WIPP.

EM has successfully employed soft-sided contamination enclosures in Idaho in the past for a variety of uses, including opening and repackaging degraded waste containers, sizing large metal items like steel girders and using cutting tools to reduce the size of large, contaminated gloveboxes.

"Our crews have an outstanding track record of safety and performance in these enclosures," said Martin.

The vast majority of 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic and low-level waste at AMWTP originated at the former weapons production facility known as the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado. Crews have retrieved, characterized, treated, certified and shipped for disposal about 73% of that inventory since 2000.

-Contributor: Erik Simpson