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.
SRS has already replaced two melters since it began its liquid waste processing campaign. The first melter lasted about eight years, and Melter 2 lasted about 14 years until a heater stopped functioning on Feb. 1 of this year. Since then, liquid waste processing has been suspended at SRS 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. 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 recommendation will now elevate to DOE headquarters for consideration. The department can reject it, or approve partial or full implementation.
