Legacy Transuranic Waste to be Shipped Out of Idaho

The agreement announced today follows a federal court order in 2006 that required the United States government to take the waste out of Idaho.

The waste is contained in a 97-acre site, known as the Subsurface Disposal Area, that began receiving radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes in 1952. Transuranic wastes, or wastes contaminated with plutonium, came from Rocky Flats in Colorado, where nuclear weapons were once manufactured.

That waste is distributed unevenly in pits and trenches of roughly 15 acres of the landfill, according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Energy, which manages the site.

The new agreement between the federal and Idaho governments identifies a range of between 5.7 acres and 7.4 acres for shipment of at least 7,485 cubic meters of wastes that are most likely to be contaminated with transuranic elements, the DOE said.

Transuranic wastes, which in the United States are byproducts of weapons production, have half-lives greater than 20 years. Because of the relatively long time it takes for the isotopes to decay, the waste requires more careful handling than low-level radioactive waste.

The Idaho waste will be sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a federally licensed repository for transuranic waste, DOE spokesman Bradley Bugger told ENS.

Any of the targeted waste that is not appropriate for WIPP may go elsewhere, possibly to a private operation called Energy Solutions Facility in Utah or to the Nevada Test Site, a federal site for low-level radioactive waste, Bugger said.

Remaining contamination will be treated by a combination of methods such as vacuuming hazardous chemical vapors, capturing mobile contaminants in a kind of grout and capping the landfill for long-term stability, accompanied by monitoring and re-evaluation at least every five years of the effectiveness of the cleanup strategies.

"The Department of Energy is pleased to reach an agreement with the state of Idaho on a cleanup plan that assures the Snake River Plain is protected," DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management James Rispoli said in a statement. "After an extensive evaluation of technical data and careful consideration of public input, we believe this approach will be protective of the environment and ensure worker safety and our national security."

Illustrating the many years over which the federal and state governments have tangled over the waste, an announcement of the agreement today was attended by three governors of Idaho: Current Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter; Phil Batt, who was in office from 1995 to 1999; and Cecil Andrus, who served from 1971 to 1977 and again from 1987 to 1995.

"Finally, after all of these years, the federal government has agreed to comply with the removal of the transuranic waste that has been buried in Idaho for too long," Andrus, who served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior under the Carter Administration, said in a statement.

Resolution of the transuranic waste problem at the Idaho National Laboratory does not in any way end Idaho’s involvement with radioactive materials. The state has been selected by the French company AREVA as the site of a new $2 billion uranium enrichment plant to serve commercial nuclear power plants - a plan decried by environmental groups and celebrated as an economic boon by Otter and other state officials.

This spring, Idaho became the repository for 6,700 tons of sand containing traces of depleted uranium and lead from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army base in Kuwait, according to a May 1 report from the Associated Press. The sand was transported by rail by American Ecology Corp. to a hazardous-waste disposal site 70 miles southeast of Boise.

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