A sinkhole discovered last month near the 2H Evaporator at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has been fixed, a DOE spokesperson said Friday by email.
The sinkhole, about 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, and more than 3 feet deep, was discovered in asphalt on the east side of the evaporator during the week of June 22, according to a report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
Contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) prohibited operation of the 2H Evaporator and transfers through lines in close proximity of the hole. The area was backfilled by SRR on July 2 using low-strength concrete and topped with crusher run, the DOE spokesperson said.
The 2H Evaporator, which was already offline when the hole was discovered, resumed operations on July 10. “It had been in a planned outage for chemical cleaning and equipment upgrades since June 2017,” the agency spokesperson said. Such outages are built into liquid waste system planning.
The 2H Evaporator is more than 16 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter, with an operating volume of 1,800 gallons.
The 2H and 3H Evaporators boil the salty waste water at the storage tanks at SRS and, in the process, reduce the waste volume to about 25 to 30 percent of the original volume. This makes more space available for continuing liquid waste operations.
