A pair of steel canisters did not pass their leak tests at the Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility, but were still then filled with glass-immobilized waste and stored in the site’s Glass Waste Storage Building, according to a report posted online recently by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
As of Aug. 18, the canisters were still in the Glass Waste Storage Building, Savannah River Remediation spokeswoman Colleen Hart wrote in an Aug. 18 email, and “there are no safety concerns with these canisters.” She added, “no release of radioactive material occurred.”
Personnel evidently discovered the canisters had failed their leak checks, but did not mark the canisters themselves as leaky, according to a report prepared by DNSFB staff after a site visit the week of July 18. The report was posted online on Aug. 12.
Despite the mistake, which the site liquid waste contractor acknowledged and blamed on operating procedures that have since been tightened, the canisters remain in the Glass Waste Storage Building, with no plans to move them. The canisters contain solidified waste that comes from the site’s liquid waste tank farms, which themselves hold the byproducts of Cold War plutonium refining and post Cold-War chemical separations treatments. This waste, too radioactive for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, is stored on site at Savannah River, nominally for an interim period.
