Members of the White Pine Nuclear Waste Project Office and the Nuclear Waste Advisory Board had the opportunity to tour the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) on May 13, 2002.
INEEL, situated on 890 square miles (approximately 570,000 acres) between Idaho Falls and Arco, in southeast Idaho, is the setting for some of the most advanced energy research in the world.
Argonne National Laboratory-West
(ANL-W) was the first stop on the tour. ANL-W conducts nuclear research and development and operates facilities for the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE). The focus of the ANL-W segment of the tour was their newly developed pyroprocess, which ANL-W believes is the basis for a proliferation-resistant fuel cycle with improved waste management.Argonne claims that using the pyroprocess technology (recovering actinides from spent fuel and recycling back into the reactor for in-situ destruction) eliminates much of the long-term toxicity from the waste and considerably eases the technical performance requirements of a repository. They stress that pyroprocessing does not eliminate the need for a permanent repository but will allow the technical performance requirements to be met more easily and reduce the burden of long-term stewardship.
The area formerly known as the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (ICPP) was the next location on the tour. The ICPP is a one-of-a-kind reprocessing facility for government-owned nuclear fuels from research and defense reactors. Facilities at ICPP include spent fuel storage in cooling pools as well as underground and above ground storage areas. The waste from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident is stored in above ground metal and concrete casks on the site. ICPP also houses reprocessing areas and a state-of-the-art waste solidification operation. Between 1953 and 1992, when the reprocessing mission was discontinued, the facility recovered over $1 billion worth of fuel at a cost of considerably less than that.
Test Area North (TAN) was the final destination. TAN consists of facilities for the handling, storage, examination and research of spent nuclear fuel. TAN houses one of the world's largest hot shops, storage pools, and examination operations, which supported analysis of the Three Mile Island accident.
Several of the areas of INEEL were inaccessible due to maintenance schedules or security classifications, but the trip still afforded close-up views of leading-edge technology in fuel processing, storage, transportation and long-term disposal options.