The Department of Energy and Savannah River Site held a ribbon cutting on Tuesday to formally celebrate completion of the South Carolina site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). The facility will process the salt waste that is stored in SRS storage tanks and send the cesium and actinide portions of the waste to the site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), which processes the highly radioactive liquid waste in the SRS storage tanks. The remaining salt solution in the salt waste will be mixed with a special cement grout to create a less harmful product suitable for disposal on site.
Salt waste accounts for more than 90 percent of the waste stored in SRS storage tanks and dates to the Cold War-era when the waste was generated from production of nuclear weapons. With construction complete, the project will now transition to the testing and commissioning phase to make sure the facility meets safety and design guidelines for waste processing. The facility, designed to process 95 million gallons of waste, is expected to begin radioactive operations in December 2018. The total project cost is estimated at $2.3 billion.
“This is a key milestone for the project and for our workforce, who has performed so well by safely and efficiently completing construction activities on this facility,” Frank Sheppard, senior vice president for plant contractor Parsons, stated in a press release.
Parsons completed construction of the facility in April, eight months ahead of the schedule set under the DOE baseline set in 2014 but well after the original schedule to have the site online in 2015. Monica Regalbuto, assistant secretary for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, attended the ribbon cutting along with key SRS officials.
