A community advisory board to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina wants the Energy Department to provide funding to start construction of a vault that will store retired waste processing equipment.
In a recommendation approved Tuesday, the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) asked DOE to get a head start on building a vault to store Melters 3 and 4 at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). The melters are 75-ton refractory-lined vessels that will receive millions of gallons of high-level waste from the site’s waste tanks. The melters then combine the waste with a mixture known as borosilicate frit to remove contamination. When heated in the melter, these elements form a molten glass, which is then poured into stainless-steel canisters for safe storage.
The Savannah River Site has already replaced two melters since it began its liquid waste processing campaign. The first melter lasted about eight years, and Melter 2 lasted 14 years until a heater stopped functioning on Feb. 1 of this year. Since then, liquid waste processing has been suspended while workers install Melter 3 in the DWPF. Operations are expected to resume at the top of the year.
All told, SRS stores about 35 million gallons of Cold War-era liquid waste in more than 40 underground waste tanks.
The retired Melters 1 and 2 are stored on site in a Failed Equipment Storage Vault at the Defense Waste Processing Facility. The first storage vault was part of the overall DWPF construction project, which began in 1983 and cost $1.276 billion.
Though new melters generally last for several years, they “could fail for any given reason, and require replacement,” according to the CAB. That’s why the board is asking DOE to expedite funding for the storage of the Melters 3 and 4.
“Initiate the budget for the construction of Failed Equipment Storage vault for melter numbers 3 and 4,” the CAB wrote in its list of recommendations. “Develop design of the Failed Equipment Storage, and start the construction to keep the construction cost low.”
The CAB also approved a recommendation that DOE find additional space for the canisters that are filled after DWPF vitrifies the waste. The Savannah River Site has reported it is running out of storage space for the canisters at its Glass Waste Storage Facility, which now houses 4,155 canisters.
In recent years, the site has remedied that problem by double-stacking canisters on top of one other, thereby doubling the amount of space.
Even so, the CAB said SRS will still need space to store another 1,306 canisters based on the site’s projection that the Defense Waste Processing Facility will produce 8,170 canisters. The CAB wrote that SRS should “advocate for a final repository for these canisters,” and “continue to work on plans to accommodate the additional 1,306 canisters until a repository is established.”
The recommendations will now elevate to DOE headquarters for consideration. The department can deny them, or decide implement them in part or full.
