The Energy Department has given its blessing for operations to start at the long-awaited Salt Waste Processing Facility (SPFF) at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
In a press release Tuesday, the DOE Office of Environmental Management announced issuance of critical decision 4 (CD-4) and authorization to operate. The CD-4 basically means a project has met the technical criteria for success and may start the transition into actual operations.
The facility to treat 35 million gallons of radioactive waste currently held in 43 underground tanks “will drive significant progress in treating the tank waste at SRS in the next decade,” DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White said in the release.
In 2002, Parsons signed a $2.3 billion contract to design and build the 140,000-square-foot facility to treat salt waste left over from Cold War nuclear-weapon operations at Savannah River. The company basically finished construction in June 2016, which had DOE and Parsons eyeing a December 2018 startup. But valve replacements and other technical hitches delayed operation by more than a year.
As recently as early March, DOE and Parson said startup should commence this spring. In late March, however, DOE cut back to skeleton staffing at Savannah River and most other cleanup sites in an effort to stem the spread of novel coronavirus 2019 among workers.
In respective press releases, both Parsons and DOE stressed the SWPF will still be operational before the January 2021 deadline agreed to in the contract.
The SWPF should start normal operations later this year after completion of hot commissioning, DOE said in its release. As a result, nearly all of the salt waste inventory at Savannah River should be processed by 2030, according to the department.
“The innovations of SWPF will forever change how we remediate nuclear waste and ensure that a cleaner, more sustainable and environmentally sensitive world is possible for the future,” Parsons CEO Chuck Harrington said in the company press release.
The SWPF will separate highly radioactive waste—such as cesium, strontium, and actinides—from the less radioactive salt solution. Salt waste accounts for over 90% of the material in the site’s remaining high-level waste tanks.
Separating the salt is a big step toward emptying the tanks. The decontaminated salt solution will be mixed with cement-like grout at the nearby Saltstone Facility for on-site disposal.
