Legacy of Batt ‘alive and well’ at event to celebrate dry storage of nuclear fuel | Opinion

About 400 people gathered at the desert site north of Idaho Falls on Tuesday to celebrate the achievement of a major milestone in the effort to remove nuclear waste from Idaho.

It should be cause for all Idahoans to celebrate. It means Idaho’s water is safer than it was before, and it demonstrates that we have a consistently improving ability to handle the byproducts of nuclear energy, a vital source of carbon-free electricity that we desperately need to combat climate change.

The Idaho Cleanup Project successfully moved the last canisters of spent nuclear fuel — old uranium fuel rods from nuclear reactors at Idaho National Laboratory and the nearby Naval Reactor Facility — from wet storage to dry storage earlier this month.

“If you walk through the doors behind me … you would actually see the site of the empty pool,” said Connie Flohr, the Department of Energy’s manager of the Idaho Cleanup Project, at the event. “That is a testament to the hard work, vision and collaboration of all of you in this room.”

Dry storage is safer than wet storage for a few reasons. In wet storage, fuel rods can corrode and contaminate the water that houses them. So the water has to be actively treated continuously to keep it clean. In dry storage, waste is sealed off in canisters that can be more or less left alone.

The shift to dry storage also eliminates the possibility of contaminated water leaking into the East Snake Plain Aquifer, the main source of irrigation and drinking water for residents and agricultural operations from St. Anthony to Twin Falls.

And the move to dry storage is also an important step toward shipping the waste out of the state, a core commitment Idaho won from the Department of Energy under the leadership of former Govs. Cecil Andrus and Phil Batt.

The task was completed nine months ahead of the Dec. 31 deadline set forth in the 1995 Settlement Agreement, which outlines plans for the U.S. Department of Energy to remove its waste from the Gem State.

“Nine months early is never something I get to say. You have made this possible,” said Assistant Secretary Kathryn Huff, who leads the Office of Nuclear Energy, to the large group of gathered employees.

Gov. Brad Little noted he has been coming out to the lab since the 1980s.

“The one constant is the dedicated people who do the hard work day in and day out to get this mission accomplished,” said Little. “I want to commend everybody for what you’ve done.”

Attorney General Raúl Labrador lauded the accomplishment, as well.

“This is just fantastic for Idaho,” Labrador said.

INL Director John Wagner said the project also sends an important message.

“It’s important to the nation, in terms of demonstrating how to responsibly manage our spent nuclear fuel and related materials,” he said.

Tuesday’s celebration is the latest in a string of success for the Idaho Cleanup Project. Less than a year ago, the Accelerated Retrieval Project celebrated its completion 18 months ahead of schedule.

But hard problems do remain.

One is getting the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, a facility meant to solidify about 900,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste so it can be shipped out of the state, up and running. The unit uses novel technology, and it has faced chronic technical difficulties that have caused past deadlines to be missed.

Flohr said in an interview that the Cleanup Project hopes to begin a new round of testing at IWTU next month.

The other major hurdle is getting spent fuel in dry storage shipped out of the state. The waste from the Accelerated Retrieval Project is being shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, but the spent nuclear fuel has no available destination. It was originally planned to be shipped to Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, but that facility has never opened (and likely never will open) due to political opposition.

But the recent successes give a reason for hope and to look back on the long, hard work it took to get here.

At the beginning of March, Little was meeting with cleanup officials to discuss progress on the wet-to-dry storage transfer milestone.

“I was looking forward to updating Gov. Batt on where we are. Because those of us that know him — he was naturally a skeptic of everything,” Little said in an interview.

Little planned to give Batt an update on his 96th birthday, he said. Unfortunately, that was the day Batt died. But his work to remove nuclear waste from Idaho won’t be forgotten.

“I want everyone to know that his legacy is alive and well,” Little said.

Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman based in eastern Idaho.