The Department of Energy says the Tank-Side Cesium Removal project at the Hanford Site in Washington state has now pretreated 380,000 gallons of low-level radioactive tank waste before entering its latest outage on July 20.
More than 182,000 gallons of tank waste was treated in Batch 2, which began on June 18 and concluded July 20, a DOE spokesperson said in a Wednesday email. Batch 1, which started Jan. 26 and ended in March, removed 198,000 gallons from low-level tank waste.
“We look forward to resuming tank waste treatment when the maintenance and updates to the processes are completed in the coming weeks,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “[W]e will replace ion exchange columns that became loaded with cesium,” the spokesperson said, adding the process must be repeated periodically.
The DOE is taking a “slow, deliberate approach” to evaluate all aspects of the operation, and the process will take several weeks, the spokesperson said.
The agency hopes to use the Tank-Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) project to pretreat 1 million gallons of waste prior to startup of the Direct-Feed-Low-Activity-Waste Facility at the Waste Immobilization and Treatment Plant planned for late 2023.
The DOE and its contractors are also looking into damaged “process hose connectors” at the TSCR, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a staff report dated July 22.
“A few components used to connect the ion exchange columns to the system were redesigned,” the DOE spokesperson said of the issue identified in the board’s report. Radiological protection practices were strengthened and other upgrades are being made, the spokesperson added.
The Amentum-led tank operations contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, designed the TSCR system and managed the construction and installation by subcontractors AVANTech, according to DOE.
The Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel is designed to super-heat the waste and blend it with glass-forming chemicals to vitrify the tank waste into a more stable form for eventual disposal. Hanford has about 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste held in 177 underground tanks, many of which are leak-prone, DOE has acknowledged.
