The Department of Energy on Tuesday declared construction of the Salt Waste Processing Facility at its Savannah River Site complete, setting the stage for the roughly $2-billion, Parsons-built plant in South Carolina to begin treating radioactive waste by December 2018 — three years later than planned as recently as 2009.
SWPF is designed to treat about 95 million gallons of salt waste distilled from the site’s two liquid-waste tank farms.
Parsons, of Pasadena, Calif., has been under contract to build the plant since 2002 and was supposed to have the facility online in October 2015, per the federal facilities agreement with South Carolina that governs DOE’s operation of SRS. Parsons acknowledged it would not make that date in 2012, when the company submitted a revised cost estimate that prompted DOE to raise the total project cost roughly $1 billion to $2.3 billion or so. In 2009, DOE thought the plant would cost about $1.34 billion.
A driving factor in the overrun was a Parsons subcontractor that failed to deliver 10 large mixing vessels for the project on time. Parsons fired the subcontractor and got the vessels from another vendor, but not in time to make the 2015 start date.
DOE subsequently approved the new project baseline in 2014, under which Parsons would begin radioactive waste processing no later than 2021. With Tuesday’s announcement, DOE and its contractor appear to have avoided that worst-case scenario.
The department hopes SWPF will treat about 9 million gallons per year, on average, from 2018 through 2027. Parsons will bring the facility online, including radioactive waste operations, then turn the plant over to the contractor that succeeds Savannah River Remediation as DOE’s next SRS liquid-waste cleanup contractor.
The follow-on SRS liquid-waste contract will be worth about $6 billion and, including a two-year option, run from 2017 to 2027, DOE estimated in March when it released a draft solicitation for the work.
8:50 a.m. EST, Wednesday, June 8. — This story has been edited to include the correct amount of total salt waste to be reprocessed in SWPF, and clarifies that DOE, rather than the contractor, raised the estimated total project cost to $2.3 billion.
