Department Expects Facility to Begin Full Operations In May
Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
3/07/2014
PHOENIX, Ariz.—With the Idaho Sodium-Bearing Waste Treatment Facility now operating at its normal temperature and pressure, the Department of Energy is “cautiously optimistic” that the start of actual waste processing can get underway this spring as currently planned, a senior DOE Office of Environmental Management official said here this week. CH2M-WG Idaho, the contractor responsible for the facility, was set to wrap up a readiness assessment by the end of this week, and depending on if there any pre-start findings that still need to be resolved, DOE could launch its assessment as soon as early next week. “We’ve had some hiccups along the way with startup. We are at normal operating temperatures and pressures. … We’re hopeful that we won’t encounter any more hiccups as we complete the DOE ORR and start looking at [using] simulant,” EM Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tank Waste and Nuclear Materials Management Ken Picha said at this year’s Waste Management Symposia.
The SBWT Facility, also known as the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, is intended to treat the approximately 900,000 gallons of remaining liquid waste at the Idaho site through a steam reforming process for disposal and to allow for closure of the site’s remaining waste tanks. The facility is intended to help DOE meet a commitment to the state of Idaho to have the liquid waste processed by the end of this year, and both the Department and CWI have stressed they believe the milestone can still be met. DOE previously had a commitment to the state to complete processing of the waste by the end of 2012, but in the summer of that year, startup of the facility was significant disrupted by what has been described as a “pressure event.” The incident occurred when the facility’s filters became clogged with carbon material during efforts to get it up to its operating temperature. The facility was shut down and DOE and CWI implemented a set of modifications, the last of which were completed last summer.
Facility ‘Has Fought Us Kicking and Screaming’
With the modifications completed, CWI and DOE continued to encounter challenges as they worked to get the facility up to its operating temperature and pressure. The most recent hurdle came in mid-February, when the facility had to be briefly shut down because of a “faulty valve,” according to Danielle Miller, a spokeswoman for the DOE Idaho Operations Office (WC Monitor, Vol. 25 No. 7). “The mid-February cool down was the result of a faulty valve which was promptly repaired and the facility was reheated within the week,” she said in a written response.
Once the contractor and DOE readiness assessments are completed, steam and a waste simulant will be introduced in the facility to complete the integrated system test now underway. Once the test is completed, depending on the results, the facility will enter into a planned cool-down and outage period, and DOE will seek permission from Idaho regulators to initiate actual waste processing. The Department currently expects to begin actual waste processing in May, with a seven-to-10 month campaign expected to complete waste processing. “This facility has fought us kicking and screaming all the way up to starting the facility,” Ken Whitham, assistant manager for facilities and material disposition at the DOE Idaho Operations Office, said at this week’s meeting.
Whitham noted the deliberate approach the Department and CWI has taken in its latest efforts to get the facility in operation. “In the latest runs to start this facility up, the operators and the contractor really have learned each time they went forward,” he said. “It really has been step forward, [have a] challenge, overcome that challenge, step forward, step forward, step forward. And in many cases the Department’s role in that has been to make sure … to manage that schedule pressure so it didn’t result in people doing something ill-considered.”
