SAVANNAH RIVER ASSESSING DAMAGE AND RESTARTING FACILITIES AFTER COLD SNAP

The Savannah River Site is still in the process of assessing damage and bringing facilities back to full operations after an unusual cold snap last week shut down the site’s biomass plant and associated steam lines. “The Ameresco Biomass Co-generation Facility (BCF) steam plant experienced instrumentation failures very early Tuesday morning (7 Jan) due to the sub-zero temperatures caused by the Polar Vortex wind chill,” Department of Energy Savannah River Operations Office spokesman Jim Giusti said in a statement. “This resulted in a complete plant shut down that created a steam outage for the F, H, and S areas.  Repair crews worked 24/7 to restore the BCF steam plant to operation and steam was brought back to F, H, and S areas by late Thursday night.  Freeze damage due to this steam outage is under assessment.”

 

Facilities across the site were impacted by the outage, and some still must be fully restarted. “All of our facilities were brought down to a safe configuration while we waited to figure out how we were going to get steam back,” Giusti told WC Monitor. Most of the facilities could be back in full operation this week, but the restart may stretch into next week “because we are being very methodical about how we bring these back up,” Giusti said. He emphasized that biomass plant contractor Ameresco and site management-and-operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions “did an outstanding job of bringing us back up.”