BOISE, Idaho — Some cleanup efforts at a nuclear waste landfill in eastern Idaho are on hold while workers try to figure out what caused a collapse in a dig area that sent an excavator into a pit.
The excavator was digging up transuranic waste — which is waste contaminated with highly radioactive elements.
No radiation was released during the incident last week, and no one was injured, said Erik Simpson with Fluor Idaho, the contractor hired to clean up the site at the Idaho National Laboratory.
“Our crews had been exhuming waste for about 30 minutes when a portion of the pit wall where the excavator was operating sloughed off and the excavator slid into the pit,” Simpson said. “We’re working on a path to remove the excavator from the edge of the pit and basically make some additional enhancements to protect the operators and the excavators from this point forward.”
The excavator was digging inside a large building at the 97-acre Subsurface Disposal Area when the side of the pit collapsed. The pit is about 21-feet deep, and the operator remained inside his protective cab for about 90 minutes afterward while crews worked to make sure it was safe for him to leave.
The collapse at INL was just a few days after workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state discovered that a large sinkhole had caved in a tunnel filled with radioactive waste there. That discovery prompted an emergency, with some workers evacuated and others ordered to stay inside buildings for a time.
But the collapsed pit at the Idaho National Laboratory was less dramatic, in part because the nearly 2-acre dig site is completely enclosed in a soft-sided building designed to contain any radioactive debris.
Simpson said the workers inside the building were also wearing protective gear.
