NorthwestFebruary 12, 2004

TWIN FALLS -- Workers at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory have excavated about half of the radioactive waste buried in unlined trenches in a test-retrieval project at Pit 9.

The $80 million project engineered by INEEL contractor Bechtel BWXT Idaho is designed to retrieve waste from a fraction of Pit 9, a one-acre excavation in an 88-acre landfill where production waste from Cold War-era nuclear weapons was buried until 1970.

The waste, contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive and toxic substances, sits in unlined pits and trenches about 580 feet above the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, which supplies water to 200,000 southern Idaho residents.

"We found what we expected to find -- plastic bags, drums in various states of corrosion, just the garbage we expected. There hasn't been any surprises," said Stacey Francis, an INEEL spokeswoman.

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A backhoe dug about 15 feet down to clean out the debris in the first part of the test area, Francis said. Soil samples will be tested for contaminants to evaluate whether waste has migrated below the landfill.

Enough debris to fill about 290 barrels has been removed so far from Pit 9, said Kathleen Trever, director of the state's INEEL oversight program. That adds up to about 50 cubic yards -- about half of what scientists expect to extract from the test plot.

The buried metal barrels have decayed and no longer are intact, but plastic bags that contain waste still are in good shape, Trever said.

Associated Press

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