Planned fuel handling facility at site ‘vitally important’ to Navy
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ARCO — A building project at the Naval Reactors Facility on the Idaho National Laboratory site will pay “huge dividends” for national defense, a visiting Navy admiral says.
The Naval Spent Fuel Handling Facility will handle spent fuel in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. The program manages 101 reactors used on aircraft carriers and submarines, or more than 45 percent of the Navy’s combat vessels.
Naval Spent Fuel Handling Facility by the numbers
Total project cost: $1.65 billion
Cost for facility construction: $500 million
Number of construction jobs: 350 (Jacobs Field Services North America Inc. is designing and building the facility)
Physical size: More than 200,000 square feet with a 3.9 million-gallon water pool
2017: Site preparation begins
Construction begins: 2019
Facility operations begin: 2024
Source: Naval Reactors Facility and Naval Nuclear Laboratory
Right now, spent nuclear fuel from the NNPP is being processed through the Expended Core Facility at the site. In addition to having aging equipment — the old facility is 60 years old — it can’t process full-length containers of spent fuel from aircraft carriers. The Naval Spent Fuel Handling Facility, however, will be able to do so.
Ground was broken Thursday in a ceremony attended by local, state and federal leaders, as well as site employees. It was the first time media was allowed at the NRF — which is inside the Idaho National Laboratory site — since 1998.
“(The new facility) is vitally important for what we’re doing to do as the Navy,” said Admiral Frank Caldwell, director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, called the Naval Spent Fuel Handling Facility “long overdue.”
He said the lack of a permanent repository in the United States for spent nuclear fuel is an issue that could be resolved as soon as this year. Finding a permanent repository to store vast quantities of nuclear waste or radioactive materials — including large quantities of waste in Idaho — has been a topic of discussion for many years.
“That’s been a failure of Congress and the past administration to not reach a resolution,” he said.
Idaho Falls Mayor Rebecca Casper said she wasn’t worried about the length of time needed for the federal government to come up with a permanent home for nuclear waste.
“The casks (that contain the spent fuel) are safe enough to have a picnic on with your children,” she said. “(They) are made to last 10,000 years. Idaho is safe.”
