The Savannah River Site is on pace to restart liquid waste operations “toward the end of the year,” according to a SRS Facebook post that also detailed progress in switching out melters at one of the site’s main waste processing facilities.
The update Monday says Melter 3 recently arrived at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), which converts highly radioactive waste stored at the Department of Energy site in South Carolina into a solid glass form for storage. The facility is designed to process over 30 million gallons of sludge and salt waste stored in more than 40 waste storage tanks, a byproduct of Cold War nuclear weapons operations at SRS. To date, the DWPF has solidified approximately 61 million curies of radioactivity and poured over 16 million pounds of glass. It is expected to remain in service for another 20 years.
Melter 3 is a 75-ton refractory-lined vessel that will receive the high-level waste, then combine it with a mixture known as borosilicate frit to remove contamination. When heated in the melter, these elements form a molten glass, which is then poured into stainless-steel canisters for safe storage.
The vessel is replacing Melter 2, which could not be repaired after its heater stopped functioning on Feb. 1. Site liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is expected to need six months to install the new melter, at a cost of about $3 million.
Melter 3 was transported to the DWPF using a tractor-trailer. That came after final assembly and testing to make sure the melter was ready for use. “Melter 3 is scheduled to be installed into the melt cell by the end of July, with operations planned to begin toward the end of the year,” SRS wrote in the Facebook post.
A DOE spokesperson confirmed in February that liquid waste operations at the Savannah River Site would be put on hold until the DWPF repair is complete. It will take most of the rest of the year to bring Melter 3 online, and tie it in to DWPF and the Modular Caustic Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU), which processes the salt waste stored in the SRS tanks.
Salt waste accounts for roughly 90 percent of the tank waste volume at Savannah River. In late 2018, the site is expected to start up the larger Salt Waste Processing Facility, which will boost waste processing from 1.5 million gallons a year to 6 million.
“There is a short-term impact to sludge and salt production since DWPF is involved in both processes but poses no additional risks,” the spokesperson said. “However, in terms of the lifecycle of liquid waste work, this outage will have little, if any, impact. These outages are factored into the Liquid Waste System Plan.”
DOE reported in 2015 that anticipated completion of liquid waste cleanup at Savannah River had been pushed back from 2042 to 2065, with the cost surging to $25 billion more than the original estimate. New cost projections reported in 2015 were between $91 billion and $109 billion.
