Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
6/13/2014
Responding to criticism from South Carolina regulators of a new Savannah River Site liquid waste plan with lengthy delays, the site’s top official emphasized this week that the site is still committed to closing tanks. The Department recently released the latest revision of the site’s liquid waste system plan, which delays completing closure of old-style high level waste tanks 10 years beyond regulatory commitments to 2032. The further delay was driven in a large part by budget cuts to the site’s liquid waste program. “Now we are looking at what can we do in light of the funding to continue to do the major tenants of risk reduction, but it may not meet all of our compliances,” Savannah River Site Manager Dave Moody told WC Monitor on the sidelines of a meeting Energy Facility Contractors Group held at DOE headquarters. “So we are clearly open to discussing that with the state and we understand their disappointment. Nothing would make us any happier than to be able to clean and close those tanks on schedule.”
The tank closure delays result from a combination of reduced funding and delays in completion of the Salt Waste Processing Facility, which is planned to greatly increase tank waste processing rates. In the latest plan 17 tanks are expected to miss regulatory commitments to South Carolina, which has led to push back from the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control. “Driving a successful liquid waste program to failure does not make sense to DHEC,” Shelly Wilson of DHEC said in a written response after the plan’s release. “Ramping down treatment in the face of present risk does not make sense, either. We prefer to work cooperatively toward mutually agreed upon milestones, but we are fully prepared to assess penalties.”
Moody: ‘We Understand Their Disappointment’
DOE is committed to working with the state on the issue, Moody said. “I look at our compliance relationship with South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control as a partnership,” he said. “So we understand their disappointment and we understand their concerns and we take that to heart because we are a partner. I believe we have achieved some extraordinary cleanup in partnership with them and regardless of tight budgets we will move forward together in partnership and that’s really how we’ll continue to make progress.”
On the other hand, efficiencies developed by contractor Savannah River Remediation have in part been able to push ahead the closure schedule of two tanks that had been expected to miss closure deadlines. Tank 16 is now on track to meet the FY’15 milestone, and the closure of Tank 12 is expected to be significantly accelerated over last year’s expectations. “We are looking what we can do to in the short term continue to clean and close,” Moody said. “So we’ve recovered the schedule on one of the tanks that had been delayed, the other one we will bring in very close behind that.”
The current tank closure date of 2032 is 15 years after the October 2017 accelerated target SRR announced when it took over the liquid waste contract. In 2012, budget cuts forced SRR to do away with its accelerated closure goals and push back old-style tank closure to 2022 in what the contractor called a “just in time” approach to meeting regulatory milestones. Then the SWPF faced a two-year delay in delivery of key components, pushing back completion of the facility and its eventual operation. As a result, last year’s system plan delayed tank closure to 2028, but the projected impacts of significant funding cuts led to the further delay of four years in the most recent revision of the plan. Enacted funding for the Savannah River liquid waste program stood at $838.5 million in Fiscal Year 2013, which dropped down to a current level of $690.5 million. DOE’s FY’15 budget requests $722.8 million for the liquid waste program.
