Morning Briefing - November 30, 2022
Visit Archives | Return to Issue
PDF
Morning Briefing
Article 2 of 5
November 30, 2022

Hanford tank contractor seeks sub to help with cesium removal quality

By ExchangeMonitor

Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions is seeking a subcontractor to help ensure the quality of its cesium-removal system for low-level radioactive tank waste at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state.

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) is looking for a subcontractor to help with the “procurement, fabrication, and testing of replacement ion exchange columns” for the Tank Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) project at Hanford, according to a Tuesday procurement notice.

Oversight of ion exchange column quality will be done at the AVANTech fabrication facility in Columbia, S.C., according to the notice.

New ion exchange columns are needed at the TSCR system every few months. Fabrication of these components started in fiscal 2021 and the quality assurance work will be needed in fiscal 2023 and 2024, according to the notice.

The notice comes as WRPS is preparing to brief the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in January over some safety concerns raised by the watchdog panel. TSCR removes cesium and solids from tank waste in preparation for the Direct Feed Low Activity Waste program to turn low-level waste into glass at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.

DOE and contractor Bechtel, builder of the vitrification plant, hope to start operating the plant by the end of 2023, although a revised court order gives them until 2025 to meet that milestone due to time lost from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The TSCR quality assurance work ranges from oversight of everything from welds to documentation, according to the procurement notice statement of work.  

Currently in an extended outage expected to last until the New Year, TSCR has pretreated 380,000 gallons of waste during two batch runs. The treated waste is held in a separate tank until it can be immobilized in glass, according to WRPS

Comments are closed.

Partner Content
Social Feed

NEW: Via public records request, I’ve been able to confirm reporting today that a warrant has been issued for DOE deputy asst. secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition Sam Brinton for another luggage theft, this time at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid airport. (cc: @EMPublications)

DOE spent fuel lead Brinton accused of second luggage theft.



by @BenjaminSWeiss, confirming today's reports with warrant from Las Vegas Metro PD.

Waste has been Emplaced! 🚮

We have finally begun emplacing defense-related transuranic (TRU) waste in Panel 8 of #WIPP.

Read more about the waste emplacement here: https://wipp.energy.gov/wipp_news_20221123-2.asp

Load More