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IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY

Idaho Cleanup Project

Waste generated by weapons testing, research and defense reactors, and laboratory research at INL has contaminated the soil with radioactive isotopes, organic solvents, and heavy metals from. The Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFA/CO), or "Cleanup Agreement," which was agreed upon by DOE, EPA, and the state of Idaho on December 4, 1991, established the process for investigating and decontaminating INL sites. The order operated under the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), also called Superfund. An Environmental Restoration Program was established at INL to clean up environmental contamination and decommission unnecessary, unused, excess facilities.

To facilitate the decontamination and dismantlement (D&D) of INL facilities, the site was divided into 10 Waste Area Groups (WAGs), which were subdivided into operable units (OUs) and solid waste management units (SWMUs). OUs, the smallest unit of treatment identified in the Cleanup Agreement, are groups of sites sharing similar environmental media, which represents a specific cleanup problem to be addressed as a single project. A total of 83 OUs were identified. Those designated as no action sites required no cleanup. Many of the operable units defined in the 1991 Agreement were combined.

When the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) and the Argonne National Laboratory-West became the Idaho National Laboratory on February 1, 2005, the cleanup operation became the separately managed Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP), which is lead by the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM). CH2M-WG Idaho, LLC (WI) is the contractor for the ICP. The DOE's Office of Environmental Management is funding the $2.9 billion project to dispose of the research and testing waste that has contaminated the INL site.

The 7-year ICP, which is scheduled for completion in 2012, focuses on five major geographic areas including the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC), the Power Burst Facility (PBF), the Reactor Technology Complex (RTC), the Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC), and Test Area North (TAN). The process involves treating sodium-bearing waste, removing transuranic waste from subsurface disposal, and demolishing 200 structures.