1. December 14, 2011
Story by Mark Mendiola
About 40 full-time
CWI employees, including
subcontractors, are deep-
ly involved in the concep-
tual design phase of a
$3.5 billion Calcine Dispo-
sition Project (CDP) that
would take up where the
Integrated Waste Treat-
ment Unit (IWTU) leaves
off in a few years.
“The Calcine Disposi-
tion Project is alive and
kicking. At some point in
the future, the calcine
project will become the
big boy on the block when
many other projects are
done,” says Bill Kirby, Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP)
vice president of engineering and calcine disposi-
tion.
This marks the first time anywhere in the world
that Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) technology would
be used to process high level waste, Kirby notes.
The CDP
HIP technolo-
gy would treat about 4,400 cubic meters of highly
radioactive (up to 6,000 R) calcined waste stored in
43 stainless steel bins within six massive shielded
and reinforced concrete silos.
Those vaults are near
the eastern edge of the
Idaho Nuclear Technolo-
gy and Engineering Cen-
ter (INTEC).
Among their technical
challenges, CWI engi-
neers have developed a
technology strategy to
prove HIP will turn the
calcine solids into a glass
ceramic material, and
prove a special can will
be able to contain the
calcine until it reaches a
rock-like state.
In the HIP process,
calcine and treatment
Calcine disposition would
extend work beyond IWTU
Continued
Members of the Idaho Cleanup Project’s Calcine Disposition Project team.
Mark Mendiola photo
Above, Integrated Test Facility planned
for Calcine Disposition Project. At right,
CDP Hot Isostatic Pressing hot cells are
shown.
Graphics courtesy of Jim Beck

2. additives are mixed and then loaded into
thin wall cans that are welded shut. The-
se cans are placed in a pressure vessel,
which is heated to “melt” the calcine
mixture while being compressed with
high pressure argon gas.
“The bin sets were designed to put
material in, but not take it out,” says Kir-
by, who has been overseeing the CDP
since about June.
CDP Project Engineer Vondell Balls
says retrieving the material is a project
unto itself.
CDP Project Manager Jim Beck says
there is a possibility the HIP process also
could be used to further treat IWTU’s so-
dium-bearing waste if need be to facili-
tate a final disposal pathway and further
reduce its volume after the IWTU mission
is completed.
In contrast to HIP, the $580 million
IWTU will use a “steam reforming tech-
nology” to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium
-bearing waste from three underground stainless
steel tanks at the INTEC Tank Farm, starting in
2012.
That will convert the liquid waste into a granular
sodium carbonate. It is to be packaged by the end
of 2012 in accordance with the 1995 Idaho Settle-
ment Agreement.
Acidic liquid waste – a raffinate from the spent
nuclear fuel dissolution process – was stored in 11
300,000 gallon stainless
steel tanks at the INTEC
Tank Farm.
Most of it was calcined
into a dry granular solid by
using a high temperature
process that cut the vol-
ume by an average seven
times and reducing the
need for wet storage and
the threat of contaminating
the Snake River Plain Aqui-
fer.
Seven of the tank
farm’s 11 tanks have been
decommissioned and grout-
ed. The remaining liquid
waste was to be calcined
before it was decided to
cease calcining in 2000, but
since has remained underground in the tanks. Once
the IWTU mission is completed, the remaining four
tanks will be grouted.
Continued
Aerial view of INTEC, IWTU
Bin set inside silo.

3. Securing needed funding always is
a challenge for a major project, Kirby
says. Hundreds of millions of dollars in
equipment, materials and services
alone will need to be procured for the
CDP. Sufficient funding to perform test-
ing and complete a detailed final design
is needed to support the project’s life
cycle.
“Our project will strip out IWTU in a
surgical fashion to make space for new
treatment processes and equipment for
dispositioning calcine material,” Kirby
explains. A packaging and shipping an-
nex will be added onto the existing
IWTU structure, greatly increasing its
size.
The annex would be about 60 per-
cent the size of IWTU. The retrofit will include refur-
bishing IWTU and removing equipment. Existing
IWTU hot cells would be converted to HIP cells and
used to treat the high level calcine waste from the
bin sets.
CDP
would create
employment
for a variety
of skills –
engineering,
procure-
ment, steel-
workers,
various
trades, radi-
ological con-
trol technicians, operators, Waste Generator Ser-
vices and contract personnel.
“The bulk of our folks are now working on vari-
ous aspects of the design,” Kirby says, citing me-
chanical and electrical systems as examples. “A
project this size has something in it for everyone
with operation milestones that extend to 2035.”
The CDP team’s main mission now is to concen-
trate on submitting Resource Conserva-
tion and Recovery Act (RCRA) permit
modification requests to the Idaho De-
partment of Environmental Quality
(IDEQ) by December 1, 2012, to ensure
the project remains in compliance with
site amendments.
In December 2009, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy (DOE) signed a Record of
Decision (ROD), deciding to use HIP
technology for the CDP.
“We have a very strong and talented
group of design engineers, along with a
hardnosed project engineer, that brings
it all together,” Kirby says.
“The design authority side of the pro-
ject, also a very talented group, and our
project manager carry forward the histo-
ry of the project and much of the tech-
nology development.”
Packaging and shipping annex
Calcine disposition facility
Feed canning cell