Report: Radioactive cleanup at Idaho nuclear site working

BOISE, Idaho – Ongoing Superfund cleanup work of radioactive and other contamination at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho has been successful at protecting humans and the environment, U.S. and state officials say.

The five-year review by the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Environmental Quality and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality also said that potential exposures in areas that aren’t yet cleaned up are being controlled.

The nuclear site started operating in the late 1940s under the Atomic Energy Commission, a forerunner of the Energy Department, as part of a plan to build, test and operate nuclear reactors, fuel processing plants and support facilities. Fifty-two reactors were built over the years.

The 890-square-mile site is located about 50 miles west of Idaho Falls. The lab area is in high desert sagebrush steppe and sits atop the Lake Erie-sized Snake River Plain Aquifer, which supplies water to farms and cities in the region. The aquifer started becoming contaminated from the nuclear site in 1952, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report released last year.

The Geological Survey report said contamination levels at all but a handful of nearly 180 wells are below acceptable standards for drinking water as set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The report cited cleanup efforts at the Energy Department site as helping improve the aquifer.

Contamination at the site reached the aquifer through injection wells, unlined percolation ponds, pits where radioactive material from other states was dumped, and accidental spills. All those happened mainly during the Cold War era before regulations to protect the environment were put in place.

In 1989, the area was added to the National Priorities List for Uncontrolled Hazardous Waste Sites, becoming a Superfund site.

The five-year, statutorily-required report announced this week stems from that designation as well as a 1991 settlement agreement former Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus reached with the Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency giving Idaho some monitoring oversight of the federal facility.