Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
5/23/2014
As talks on a new commissioning agreement for the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility stretch past eight months, a DOE official this week emphasized that a new startup deal is not necessary to begin operations. DOE and SWPF construction contractor Parsons are in talks to improve upon an existing contract for startup, DOE Savannah River Manager Dave Moody said. “We have a contract for commissioning and one year of hot startup and we are proceeding down that path with that contract,” Moody said at a House Cleanup Caucus briefing on Savannah River. “So there is no deadline that we have to meet on the next negotiation. If we can mutually agree to an acceleration moving that forward we can do it, but our current contract allows us to move forward, finishing construction early and then moving right into commissioning.”
DOE and Parsons have been negotiating a new contract for the SWPF since delays in the delivery of key tanks for the facility caused the project’s price tag to increase substantially. A new agreement-in-principle reached in June 2013 covered only construction and pushed out completion of the facility from 2014 to late 2016, with commissioning and start-up to be addressed in a future agreement. Since then, talks have continued for a separate agreement covering the startup portion. DOE’s fact finding process for the discussions began in September, and formal negotiations began in December.
While the new agreement for construction includes fee incentives for completion ahead of schedule, the existing startup contract doesn’t have any incentives. “We’ll continue to look at how we can negotiate a contract that challenges both entities. Because the commissioning piece of this has drug out too long on startup of all our major nuclear facilities, I think we both need to be incentivized and that’s really what we are looking for,” Moody said. “If we can negotiate that, great. If not, we need to figure out how we can gain those efficiencies for commissioning during the process of exercising the current contract.” He added: “The goal is to move forward and not drag this out. We’re constructing a beautiful facility, we are running the pilot day in and day out, we are honing those things. So we want to be able to start up and run.”
SWPF to Begin Operations in 2018
Parsons is currently expected to complete SWPF construction more than five months ahead of the 2016 date agreed to in the agreement with DOE for a projected savings of $36 million, Moody said. “I’m proud of the partnership that we’ve established with Parsons in moving forward,” he said. But full operations are currently expected to begin in late 2018, site officials said this week, several years after South Carolina’s October 2015 regulatory milestone for SWPF startup. DOE is “working daily” with South Carolina regulators on a number of items, including SWPF, Moody said. “We look forward to continuing a good strong partnership with the state of South Carolina. I can’t predict with how they are going to respond,” he told WC Monitor on the sidelines of this week’s meeting. “Obviously we are not going to make the established date. They certainly know that. We have been in discussions with them. We really look forward to working with them and moving forward with a new date.”
DOE ‘Always Evaluating Options’
Responding to reports that DOE has conducted an analysis of alternatives to SWPF startup, Moody said: “As far as alternatives, we are always evaluating options.” He noted work on developing Next Generation Solvent, which is currently being run through the site’s existing salt waste processing system and is expected to increase processing rates. “We have a perfectly functioning solvent right now and Salt Waste Processing [Facility] will start up with that solvent but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t willing to look at improvements, and so we have invested in partnership between Savannah River National Laboratory, [liquid waste contractor] Savannah River Remediation and Parsons. We’ve gone through full-scale cold testing and we have deployed Next Generation Solvent in our pilot unit. Did we have to do that? No. But through that I believe we will see a factor of 100 improvement in decontamination factor. So looking at alternatives is something that we always do,” Moody said.
