The prime liquid-waste contractor at DOE’s Savannah River Site is still hunting for the source of a leak in the 3H Evaporator that helps make room for more liquid waste in the H-Area tank farm, a company spokesperson said Monday.
Discovered in February, the leak in the evaporator pot has eluded personnel on site, who are now trying ferret out the cracks using dye.
“The suspect areas are washed using a water spray, then a dye is sprayed on the area,” a spokesman for Savannah River Remediation wrote in a Monday email. “The dye penetrates into flawed areas making them more visible, and then the dye is rinsed off of the surface with water. If there is a crack, the dye remains in the crack after it’s rinsed so that it is more visible.”
The spokesperson likened the dye method to cracks in an old coffee cup that remain stained with dark liquid even after repeated washings.
Savannah River Remediation estimated the 3H Evaporator leaked 3,000 gallons of distilled salt waste from its evaporator pot, where briny liquid waste from H-Canyon is boiled down to so-called salt cakes that take up less space in the tank farm. So far, the contractor says, there is no risk to personnel or the environment.
With the 3H evaporator out of commission, the Savannah River Site is down to one working evaporator, called 2H, at the roughly 400-acre H-Area tank farm. The 29 tanks there are constantly filling up with waste generated by the nearby H-Canyon chemical separation facility. Losing the 3H evaporator means DOE has only about three years to come up with a workaround before H-Canyon waste clogs up the tank farm entirely.
