The Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor earned 94 percent, $23.2 million out of a possible $24.6 million, of its performance award and incentive fees for fiscal 2016. On the recently released performance scorecard, the Department of Energy highlighted Savannah River Remediation’s (SRR) response in February to a leak in an evaporator pot, which slowed liquid waste operations.
Contractors earn award fees each year by completing a task on time, or for implicit performance in areas of cost, schedule/timeliness, quality and business relations, according to DOE. This award covers the period from Oct. 1, 2015, to Sept. 30, 2016.
The Energy Department noted SRR’s actions to mitigate the failure of the 3H Evaporator Pot, which leaked 3,000 gallons of distilled salt waste. The contractor responded by halting use of 3H Evaporator, one of its two evaporators in the site’s H Tank Farm, which houses 29 tanks and millions of gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste.
Evaporators are crucial to removing much of that waste from the tanks. They boil the salt wastewater, causing the water to separate from the waste, thus reducing the waste volume to about 25 to 30 percent of the original volume. The evaporator pot must be repaired and replaced. Either way, the evaporator is expected to return to service by the second quarter of fiscal 2019.
Other noteworthy actions by SRR include the operational closing of waste Tank 12 in April after workers removed 700,000 gallons of waste – a byproduct of nuclear weapons production from the Cold War era. All told, roughly 36 million gallons of waste are stored in more than 40 tanks at the South Carolina facility. About 90 percent of that material is salt waste.
The scorecard also referenced the contractor’s support for the completed construction of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). Once it becomes operational near the end of 2018, SWPF will process the salt waste in the tanks and permanently store the waste on site. “SRR has effectively supported the integration of SWPF and the (liquid waste) program to enable the timely startup of SWPF,” the department wrote on the contractor’s scorecard. SRR is currently working with Parsons, the SRS salt waste contractor, during the SWPF testing and commissioning stage phase.
The department noted some deficiencies by SRR, including a “degradation in Conduct of Operations at the liquid waste facilities,” including electrical maintenance and procedural compliance. DOE wrote that the contractor has addressed the issues, but that progress has been slow. The department also noted an “increase in errors” by SRR while initiating corrective actions, but did not provide specifics of the errors.
In a prepared comment, SRR President Tom Foster stated: “The award fee score confirms that SRR continues to safely execute the Liquid Waste mission by reducing the risk the radioactive waste represents. Our success is the result of our employees, who not only work safely but take pride in their work.”
