Cracks in one of the Savannah River Site’s saltstone disposal vaults led to radioactive release into the environment during heavy rains earlier this year, according to documents released yesterday. The saltstone vaults hold low level tank waste in a cement-like grout, but a cracked roof in Vault 4 led to radioactive contamination entering a sedimentation basin. “In February, June, and to a lesser degree in July 2013, the sedimentation basin discharged water as a result of an uncommon amount of rainfall,” liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation said in a statement. It adds, “There were low levels of contaminants in the discharge that were within Federal release limits.”
The cracks in the vault were repaired earlier this year, monitoring of the area has increased, and upgrades to the vault are expected to take place between Fiscal Year 2014 and 2017 at a cost of about $2 million per year, according to a July 31 letter from DOE to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control obtained by Tom Clements of Friends of the Earth through a Freedom of Information Act Request. The upgrades include an elastic coating that will be installed next year to stop rain from infiltrating the vault, according to SRR. Clements said in a statement yesterday, “DOE has rightly moved to a new design for vaults to receive radioactive by-products from high-level waste but on-going diligence will be needed in monitoring the old design vaults such as the one which recently leaked.”