Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
4/17/2015
Perma-Fix Northwest said this week it would no longer pursue adding an evaporation system to its Richland facility. Perma-Fix had initially planned to add the water treatment system to its Richland facility in response to the Department of Energy’s interest in using the technology for contaminated water from the nearby Hanford cleanup, but it appears DOE has decided to go in a different direction for the waste stream. “We were pursuing a treatment method with DOE for a certain waste stream,” Perma-Fix Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing Renee Echols said this week. “They determined to go in a different direction for that waste stream so we decided to stop the project.” Echols added that without DOE onboard, the cost of adding the new system and the lack of business derived from it would not warrant installing the technology.
DOE has been using the Effluent Treatment Facility at Hanford to treat contaminated water at the site, but operations have halted after a heat exchanger in the technology broke down, requiring a replacement. Washington River Protection Solutions, which took over responsibility for the facility late last year, is estimating that the heat exchanger will be replaced and the facility will be up and running by the end of the year.
