Outdated equipment appears to be the cause of a potential delay in startup of the $2.3 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
While DOE is no longer publicly using the December 2018 date for the facility to begin operations, it is also not officially confirming a delay or giving a new startup date.
The agency had for nearly two years cited the last month of 2018 as the date for the facility to begin processing millions of gallons of radioactive salt waste at the site near Aiken, S.C. But a DOE spokesperson confirmed via email that technical troubles have forced the department to change the projection, which seems to signal a delay a startup.
The problem at hand is an outdated valve positioner, which controls the valves at the facility.
When SRS contacted the manufacturer about replacing the positioner, the site was told the company no longer offers controls for the valves controlled by the outdated positioner. “This impacts about 400 valves in the facility that will need to be upgraded,” the spokesperson wrote.
When asked how long upgrades will take, and how the SWPF startup schedule will be impacted, the spokesperson responded, “The Department is working to determine any potential impacts from the upgrading of the valve controllers. The Department continues to work toward SWPF being operational in Fiscal Year 2019.”
The spokesperson would not comment on several other questions about the issue. These include more detailed questions about the role of the valves, how the positioner controls them, how the positioner became outdated given that SWPF has not even begun operations, and how much the upgrades will cost.
Parsons, the contractor that built SWPF and is overseeing testing and commissioning, did not respond to questions about the issue.
The Salt Waste Processing Facility is expected to be a key part of the liquid waste processing mission at Savannah River. The site houses roughly 35 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste that are a byproduct of Cold War nuclear weapons production. About 90 percent of that is salt waste and the rest is sludge waste.
Construction of the facility was completed in June 2016. At that time, the Energy Department declared the December 2018 startup date, which was expected to allow enough time for testing and commissioning.
The Salt Waste Processing Facility will serve as an augmented version of the current pilot process that has been treating salt waste since 2008 by extracting radioactive isotopes including cesium, strontium, and actinides. Those isotopes are sent to the nearby Defense Waste Processing Facility where, like the sludge, they are mixed with a sand-like glass and transferred to canisters for temporary storage on-site. The decontaminated salt waste is sent to SRS Saltstone facilities for permanent storage. Once operational, SWPF is expected to increase the waste treatment process from 1.5 million gallons per year to 6 million.
