The Savannah River Site will receive $637.1 million for liquid waste treatment and cleanup in the current fiscal year – the largest chunk of the $1.31 billion designated for the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina.
The amount included in the fiscal 2018 omnibus signed last week is $37 million more than provided in fiscal 2017 and almost $40 million more than the DOE request for this year.
The SRS liquid waste mission covers treatment of more than 35 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste stored in underground tanks, a byproduct of Cold War nuclear weapons production.
Sludge waste, which represents 10 percent of the site’s total waste holding, is converted at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) into a glass form that is suitable for safe disposal.
Salt waste, the other 90 percent, has since 2005 been treated through a pilot process and then placed in the SRS Saltstone facilities for permanent disposal. But SRS expects in December to begin operations at its Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) which will increase treatment from 1.5 million gallons per year to 6 million.
The Savannah River Site will also receive roughly $150 million to complete the Salt Waste Processing Facility, along with $30 million to build Saltstone Disposal Unit 7 – a 32-million-gallon concrete structure for permanent disposal of treated salt waste. The Energy Department broke ground on the unit in February and it is slated for completion in fiscal 2019. It is expected to be needed by fiscal 2021, after six other disposal facilities — two vaults and four SDUs — are filled.
All told, SRS liquid waste cleanup could last until 2065 with a total cost somewhere between $91 billion and $109 billion.
