The Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., has finished building the Saltstone Disposal Unit- (SDU) 6: the first of seven planned 30-million-plus-gallon tanks that will store radioactive salt waste left over from processing some 35 million gallons of Cold War liquid waste, the agency said in a Friday press release.
The press release did not say when DOE and contractor Savannah River Remediation finished construction. In its fiscal 2018 budget request, DOE estimated SDU-6 would be finished in the third quarter of the government’s 2017 fiscal year, which ended June 30.
SDU-6 is supposed to be operational by February 2018, according to DOE’s 2016 Savannah River Site (SRS) liquid waste management plan: the latest iteration of the annual plan available at deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. The Department of Energy estimates it will take until October 2021 to fill up the tank, according to the plan.
DOE and Savannah River Site prime liquid waste management contractor Savannah River Remediation started building SDU-6 in 2013, according to the latest liquid waste system plan.
SDU-6 eventually will be a permanent disposal unit for low-radioactive salt waste found in the SRS storage tanks. This waste will be separated from liquid nuclear waste now stored in underground tanks at SRS. Salt waste constitutes about 90 percent of the total waste in the SRS storage tanks, which hold material left over from production of fissile material for Cold War-era nuclear weapons.
The Salt Waste Processing Facility that will treat SRS liquid waste is scheduled to begin operations in December 2018. Parsons Government Services is building the facility under a $2.1-billion contract awarded in 2002 and set to expire in 2020.
Savannah River Remediation’s cleanup contract was awarded in 2009 and, following a six-month extension announced in April, is now worth almost $4.5 billion through through Dec. 31. DOE announced the extension around the time the agency was expected to award a follow-on contract valued at an estimated $6 billion over 10 years, including options.
