Idaho Treatment Group’s Characterization and Storage Manager Chuck Stepzinski examines 100-gallon drums that have been certified and are ready to ship for disposal.

Environmental Compliance employee Evan Roberts performs an inspection of the 55-gallon drums. A weekly inspection of all the drums is required under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – Employees at EM’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) at the Idaho Site have finished preparing 7,231 certified waste drums so they’re at the ready to be shipped for disposal.

   The work falls under the Certification Row Relocation Plan, designed to create additional storage space where waste characterization is performed. It ensures the drums, arranged in 30 rows, will be ready to roll out once operations resume at EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) later this year. They join more than 5,000 other drums ready for shipment. 

   Employees moved the drums from the project’s Type II Storage Modules to a location inside the Transuranic Storage Area-Retrieval Enclosure (TSA-RE). That enclosure — roughly the size of an aircraft carrier — was built to cover the waste, most of which came from the now-closed Rocky Flats plant near Denver.

   Some 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste was originally stored in the enclosure. Since the project began in 2003, nearly 57,000 cubic meters have been safely and compliantly shipped out of Idaho. Crews expect to finish retrieving the final 1,400 cubic meters of the original waste still stored in the enclosure later this year.

   “AMWTP has done a great job in completing the project to relocate the WIPP-certified backlog into consolidated rows. This consolidation will facilitate the quick shipment of Idaho’s large backlog of waste to WIPP once shipments resume.” Idaho Solid Waste Disposition Supervisor Ben Roberts said.  

   The 45-day mass migration of drums was a precise execution of a plan that helped position drums in the certified rows without impacting full operations of other processes at AMWTP requiring drum movements, such as production and characterization. 

   The drums will move out of Idaho in roughly 800 shipments expected to take up to a year to complete if crews average 15 shipments per week.

   Relocation of the drums allows DOE’s Idaho Operations Office to efficiently manage its waste inventory and dramatically expands storage space for two other AMWTP operations, the sludge and drum repackaging projects. Moving the drums also creates space to store Accelerated Retrieval Project waste.

   "It’s a superb demonstration of the technical prowess, professional skills, and ability to adapt to changing conditions that is representative of operations at many DOE complex sites. It also shows the versatility and capabilities of AMWTP in its role as a regional waste treatment plant for DOE, and allows AMWTP to react quickly to any shipping demands once WIPP resumes operations," DOE-Idaho Deputy Manager Jack Zimmerman said.