The last major piece of equipment for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility arrived this week and was placed in the plant. The facility over the summer received two of the three major components of melter off-gas system. The final component of the system to arrive was the caustic scrubber manufactured by Premier Technology Inc., of Blackfoot, Idaho.
The LAW Facility’s two 300-ton melters will heat Hanford waste and glass-forming materials to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit and then pour the molten material into stainless steel canisters to cool and harden into a solid glass for disposal. An off-gas treatment system will be used to capture and remove contaminated materials and effluents, allowing the melters’ exhaust to be released into the atmosphere.
The caustic scrubber – weighing 19 tons and measuring 28.5 feet tall and 5.5 feet in diameter – was lowered through a roof hatch of the 90-foot-tall Low-Activity Waste Facility earlier this week. Workers inside the building hand-maneuvered the scrubber into position as the crane operator lowered it from outside. Vitrification plant workers now will finish installing insulation and internal components, as well as making hundreds of wiring, piping, and other connections within the off-gas treatment system. The work is expected to continue into early 2017.
“Receipt of the caustic scrubber is a major turning point in construction of the LAW Facility. It sets the state for completing construction of the LAW Facility in 2018,” said Kim Irwin, Bechtel National area project manager for the LAW Facility, in a statement. The Department of Energy wants to start treating waste in the facility in 2022, while work continues on the plant’s High-Level Waste Facility and Pretreatment Facility, which have technical issues that are currently being resolved. The Waste Treatment Plant is expected to be fully operational by 2036.
