Land clearing and preparation of haul roads is underway for the final three super-sized Saltstone Disposal Units at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the agency said last week.
Work crews are also grading the property and installing underground utility lines for the planned Saltstone Disposal Units (SDUs) 10, 11 and 12, at Savannah River, DOE and liquid waste contractor Savannah River Mission Completion said in an Aug. 18 press release.
Like SDUs 6 through 9, the final three large concrete vaults planned for Savannah River will be about 43-feet high, with a diameter of 375 feet and capable of holding about 34 million gallons of grouted, decontaminated salt solution, DOE said.
The agency held a ceremonial groundbreaking on the final three units in December.
The onsite disposal units are supposed to help the Savannah River Site complete its salt waste disposal program by 2037, the DOE and its BWX Technologies-led contractor said in the recent press release.
In 2021, DOE completed construction of SDU 7 at Savannah River, according to DOE and the facility is now receiving decontaminated salt waste, according to a DOE spokesperson Monday. In fiscal 2022, congress approved $68 million toward construction of SDUs 8 and 9 and about $19.5 million for SDUs 10, 11 and 12. The administration of President Joe Biden has again proposed a combined SDU construction budget of almost $87.5 million.
The Savannah River Site has about 35 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste stored in 43 underground tanks. The Salt Waste Processing Facility removes strontium and actinides and also divides the salt waste, sending the highly-radioactive portion to the Defense Waste Processing Facility, where it is vitrified into a glass form. The high-volume, decontaminated solution goes to the Saltstone Production Facility, where it is mixed with cement and placed into the SDUs for disposal as low-level waste.
Liquid waste contractor Savannah River Mission Completion is made up of BWXT, Amentum and Fluor.
