The Department of Energy and Parsons Corp. have finished hot commissioning of the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Parsons, which designed and built the 140,000-square-foot plant to treat salt waste left over from Cold War era atomic weapons work, will run the facility for a year before turning over operation to the liquid waste contractor, Savannah River Remediation in January 2022. .
The completion of hot commissioning, a process that began in October and involves verifying that plant systems work while processing actual radioactive waste, was announced by DOE in a press release this week.
After starting off with small, diluted batches, the facility has now processed 320,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste at the H Tank Farm at Savannah River, DOE said.
There is roughly 36 million gallons of tank waste at Savannah River and the Salt Waste Processing Facility is meant to treat more than 90% of that waste by separating out the most radioactive elements —such as cesium, strontium, and actinides — from the less radioactive salt solution. Decontaminated salt solution will be mixed with grout at the nearby Saltstone Facility for on-site disposal.
“The start of operations enables DOE to now close waste tanks at an unprecedented rate,” said the Office of Environmental Management’s Savannah River operation office manager, Mike Budney, in the press release.
The DOE and Parsons expect the facility to process up to six million gallons of waste during the first year of operations, which would translate to up to 500,000 gallons monthly.
The DOE expects the facility will enable it to process nearly all the salt waste by 2030.
In August, DOE greenlighted the start of radioactive operations and then dedicated the facility in a ceremony in September.
