Ron Holm, a RWMC foreman, remotely monitors activities inside an enclosed area where a debris repackaging project is underway.

A large structural steel pan was one of several pans specially fabricated by CWI for a debris repackaging project at RWMC.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – Crews with EM’s main cleanup contractor at the Idaho Site have begun processing additional waste drums and repackaging large debris from another DOE facility to help the program make progress in meeting cleanup milestones.

   The new project by CH2M-WG Idaho, LLC (CWI) takes place at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC), where workers have been exhuming and repackaging buried transuranic waste for more than a decade.

   RWMC crews recently completed a sludge-drum repackaging project, which treated over 7,100 55-gallon drums of sludge from the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) for final disposition. That repackaging project was completed within the soft-sided waste exhumation enclosure over Pit 9, the site of a buried waste exhumation mission completed four years ago.

   Crews are now processing and decontaminating debris within that enclosure, repurposing the facility because buried waste exhumation activities are finished there. RWMC employees are repackaging debris for AMWTP and separating large items that cannot be processed at AMWTP, such as metal beams, concrete, and gloveboxes. After these large items are decontaminated, they will be returned to AMWTP for disposition.

   CWI hired additional skilled trade workers, foremen, and radiological control technicians for the additional work within the enclosure. CWI’s fabrication shop is fabricating the treatment unit and other components needed to complete the complex task.

   “I applaud RWMC employees for tackling another difficult task and, once again, demonstrating their creative, can-do attitudes,” CWI Vice President Hoss Brown said.

   The site’s cleanup milestones are outlined in a host of regulatory agreements, including the 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement between DOE and state of Idaho.