The Savannah River Site’s Citizens Advisory Board’s (CAB) waste management committee last week approved a recommendation to provide adequate funding to expedite liquid waste processing at the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina. Now, the recommendation will be taken up at a full board meeting next month. If approved there it will be sent to the Department of Energy headquarters for consideration.
The recommendation does not say how much the CAB thinks the liquid waste program needs each year. In fiscal 2015, the site received $712 million for liquid waste work; that rose to $784 million for the current budget year, which ends on Sept. 30.
The recommendation is based on the SRS Liquid Waste System Plan. The plan has been revised repeatedly over the years as SRS officials deal with newer challenges and schedule changes in its liquid waste work. The most current change, Revision 20, was introduced in March and includes different cases for future liquid waste operations. The “cases” are outlined projections for completed missions at SRS that depend on several factors, such as funding and workflow. Under the recommendation, the CAB would favor “Case 3,” which offers the fastest processes to treat the SRS waste.
For example, Case 3 suggests that all SRS liquid waste facilities be placed into decommissioning by 2038, three years sooner than Cases 1 and 2. Case 3 would also involve all of the sludge and salt waste in the storage tanks being treated by 2030, two years earlier than the other plans. All told, more than 40 SRS storage tanks currently house about 36 million gallons of liquid waste that dates to the Cold War.
While the recommendation favors Case 2, site officials don’t exactly decide which want they want to pursue. Rather, various factors, such as funding and meeting work schedules, determine which case the site is close to achieving. For example, the Liquid Waste System Plan states that the Case 3 goals were outlined “assuming funding restrictions are relaxed.”
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that the CAB committee had tabled the recommendation.
