The month of March marks the 20th anniversary of turning high-level liquid radioactive waste into more safely storable glass tubes at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., the agency said Monday.
The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), a vitrification plant that mixes liquid waste with molten glass, started piping in waste on March 12, 1996, and poured the first canister of radioactive glass on April 29 of that year, DOE said in a press release. By Dec. 31, 2015, DWPF had poured out 4,000 canisters of glassified waste, the agency said.
The department expects DWPF to continue vitrification for 20 more years and produce about another 4,000 canisters of glass, according to a press release.
“DWPF is important to the Department of Energy; it’s important to the surrounding communities; and it’s important to the state of South Carolina,” DOE-SR Manager Jack Craig said in the release. “Stabilizing the waste by making it into glass means the risk is significantly reduced for the people, the community and the environment.”
DOE contractor Savannah River Remediation runs DWPF under an eight-year, cost-plus-award-fee contract awarded in 2009 and now worth $4.1 billion. The contract includes a pair of concurrent options DOE has exercised and expires on June 30, 2017. DOE plans to solicit bids for a follow-on contract in May or June.
