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IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY

Radioactive Waste Management Complex

The Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC), which occupies 187 acres, was established in 1952 to bury solid low-level radioactive waste from research programs. Starting in 1954 the facility also received defense wastes for storage. While burial ground operations commenced in the early 1950s, the oldest permanent building at the RWMC was constructed in 1974. The Subsurface Disposal Area (SDA), a 97-acre radioactive waste landfill on the western section of the site, was used to dispose of transuranic (TRU) waste, which largely came from the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado, and organic sludge from 1954 until 1970. In 1984 the INL began a policy of only accepting low-level waste from its own activities and stopped accepting shipments from other sites. Of the 97 acres, 36 were estimated to contain waste such as radioactive elements, organic solvents, acids, nitrates, and metals.

The RWMC is subdivided into three primary zones. The Administrative and Operations Area, occupying about 33 acres, includes office buildings and equipment maintenance facilities. The Transuranic Storage Area (TSA), which occupies 57 acres, stores solid transuranic (TRU) and intermediate-level waste. The main TSA facilities are the Type I and Type II storage buildings, TSA-1/TSA-Retrieval, TSA-2, and TSA-3. The TSA-2 and TSA-3 have air-support structures and the Stored Waste Examination Pilot Plant. The Subsurface Disposal Area (SDA), which occupies 97 acres, served as the disposal site for low-level beta, gamma, and TRU waste.

From the Atomic Energy Commission's opening of a landfill, the SDA, in July 1952 until 1959, waste was disposed of in 15 trenches averaging 6 feet wide, 13 feet deep, and 900 feet long. In 1957, the first large pit, Pit 1, was excavated to allow for the disposal of items too large for the trenches. Between 1959 and 1963 waste was shipped to INL and buried in Pits 2 through 5 and trenches 16 through 25. From 1963 until 1969, Pits 4 through 9 and trenches 26 to 50 were used. Starting in 1970, all TRU waste went to the Transuranic Storage Area next to the burial grounds; though radioactive waste continued to go to Pits 10 through 16 and trenches 51 through 58. Barrels from Pits 11 and 12 were moved to the Area. Unlined soil vaults measuring 12 feet deep with diameters ranging from 1 to 7 feet were used to contain higher radiation level waste from 1977 to 1993. The use of trenches was discontinued in 1981. Termed the Active Pits, Pits 17 to 20 were utilized beginning in 1985.

From 1967 to 1969 Pit 9, located in the northeast corner of SDA, received TRU waste, mostly from the Cold War nuclear weapons program. The 1995 Settlement Agreement stipulated that all TRU waste be removed from Idaho by 2018. On December 12, 2003 the INL began the excavation of Pit 9 and scheduled the removal of the waste to begin in January 2004. In accordance with an agreement between the DOE, the EPA, and the state of Idaho the demonstration had to begin by March 31, 2004. While the Pit 9 project began in the 1990s as a privatized pilot government environmental remediation project, a subcontractor did not complete the work and, as a result, the contract was terminated in 1998. In 2006, the DOE awarded North Wind a contract to remove the remaining buildings and equipment at the site while the Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) contractor, CWI, removed targeted buried waste. The RWMC is one of the five geographic area of focus for the ICP.

Pit 9 was chosen because of its corner location and the existing knowledge of its contents. In 2005, after it was determined that the concentrations of TRU radionuclide, uranium, plutonium, and other mobile, volatile organic compounds was greater Pit 4, the Accelerated Retrieval Project (ARP) began excavation of a half-acre plot. The ARP identifies, retrieves, and prepares waste for characterization and shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico, a permanent deep-geologic repository. In 2007 an excavation project, referred to as ARP II, of an additional half-acre covering the eastern part of Pit 4 and some of Pit 6 began. As of April 2008, the ICP was exhuming and shipping waste at RWMC, one of the project's five areas of focus, to WIPP.