Idaho National Laboratory Cultural Resource Management Plan

process that ended in 2001, the material was moved from TAN to a dry-storage facility at INTEC to await
its next move to a national repository for spent fuel.
However, many TAN facilities are no longer in use. The facilities at the ANP “Initial Engine Test
Area” have been demolished. The buildings that were part of the LOFT program—the Containment and
Service Building, the Reactor Control and Equipment Building, and numerous auxiliary support
buildings—are shut down and facing deactivation. The buildings used in connection to the tank armor
project will continue in use for the foreseeable future.
Part of the LOFT program included a Water Reactor Research Test Facility, a group of buildings that
supported the tests occurring in the LOFT containment building. These buildings include the Thermal-
Hydraulic Experimental Facility Assembly and Test Building (TAN-640, earlier known the LPTF), its
related Control Building (TAN-641), the Semiscale Control and Administrative Building (TAN-645), and
the Semiscale Assembly and Test Building (TAN-646). The future of these buildings is uncertain.
Significance of TAN. The evolution of program uses at TAN exemplifies the flexible adaptation of
DOE nuclear research facilities from military uses to peaceful uses — and back to military uses. After the
failure and cancellation of the ANP program, the facilities were readily reincarnated for other research
themes. Of all of them, the LOFT program and the contribution it made to reactor safety was perhaps the
most important.
The LOFT reactor was the only reactor in the world that could repeatedly simulate different kinds of
loss-of-coolant accidents that might occur in commercial power plants. The experiments conducted from
1978 to 1986 contributed to the safe operation of nuclear reactors all over the world. DOE, recognizing
that the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) had considerable experience in sponsoring international research programs, invited NEA to
establish such a program with LOFT. In addition to the experiments already carried out, the program
investigated more severe transients in which fuel disruption and release of fission products would occur.
These experiments began in October of 1983. The OECD member countries participating were Austria,
Finland, West Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United
States. In exchange for financial and technical collaboration, the OECD received valuable data on eight
accident simulations, including reactor recovery to safe conditions. The experience of working closely
together on post-test analysis forged enduring links among analysts in the member countries.
Sub-Theme: Chemical Reprocessing
Chemical Processing Plant
The 1970s and 1980s: The Second Generation of ICPP Buildings. The decade of the 1970s
began what the ICPP managers called a “facelift” of the plant. Safety standards for nuclear workers had
become more stringent, as had standards for environmental protection. Decontaminating the process cells
became more and more difficult — a consequence of the fact that the main process and waste calcining
buildings had been adapted to operate with chemical solutions that they had not been designed initially to
handle. Aside from that, equipment simply was aging.
Design engineers addressed the ICPP shortcomings by replacing and improving one system after
another. New buildings appeared all over the campus. A new Waste Disposal Building, to wash and filter
low-level gases and liquid wastes before release to the environment, was one of the first. An Atmospheric
Protection System (CPP-649), a central filtering center that collected air and off-gases to preclude
accidental releases, appeared in 1976. 297 Monitoring stations went up to detect and impound any waste
water that became accidentally contaminated. Electrical distribution was revamped in a systematic
upgrade. And a coal-fired steam generator plant went on line in 1984 to supply plant heat for the entire
297. Thumbnail Sketch 1973, p. 17.
272