The Savannah River Site will receive $637.1 million for liquid waste treatment and cleanup in the current fiscal year – the largest chunk of the $1.31 billion designated for the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina.
The amount for liquid waste operations included in the fiscal 2018 omnibus signed last week is $37 million more than provided in fiscal 2017 and almost $40 million more than the DOE request for the budget year that began on Oct. 1, 2017. The total for SRS is about $79 million above 2017 and $30 million more than the 2018 request.
The SRS liquid waste mission covers treatment of roughly 35 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste stored in more than 40 underground tanks, a byproduct of Cold War nuclear weapons production.
Sludge waste, which represents 10 percent of the site’s total waste holding, is converted at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) into a glass form that is suitable for safe disposal.
Salt waste, the other 90 percent, has since 2005 been treated through a pilot process and then placed in the SRS Saltstone facilities for permanent disposal. But DOE expects in December to begin operations at its Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), which will increase treatment levels from 1.5 million gallons per year to 6 million.
Separately, the Savannah River Site will also receive roughly $150 million to complete the Salt Waste Processing Facility, along with $30 million to build Saltstone Disposal Unit 7 – a 32-million-gallon concrete structure for permanent disposal of treated salt waste. The Energy Department in February broke ground on the unit, which is slated for completion in fiscal 2019. It is expected to be needed by fiscal 2021, after six other disposal facilities — two vaults and four SDUs — are filled.
All told, SRS liquid waste cleanup could last until 2065 with a total cost somewhere between $91 billion and $109 billion.
Another $483 million for SRS is directed toward risk management operations and nuclear materials management. The omnibus rolls both funding streams into one item, but it is unclear how much is designated for each. The 2018 request for nuclear materials was for $323 million, so it is likely that mission is receiving the overwhelming bulk of the money.
With the money, SRS will continue processing spent nuclear fuel at the site’s H Canyon facility. A large amount of the material is highly enriched uranium, which is diluted and converted into low-enriched uranium and then sent to Tennessee Valley Authority for use in commercial power reactors.
Following the February rollout of its fiscal 2019 budget request, DOE in recent days issued the detailed budget justification for its Office of Environmental Management. The agency is recommending $1.66 billion for SRS, $286 million more than what was enacted for fiscal 2017 and $340 million more than 2018. That includes $805.7 million for liquid waste work.
The justification says SRS funding would further advance the site’s liquid waste program, including removal of liquid waste from two storage tanks, and closure of those tanks, by September 2019.
The new fiscal year should also see startup of SWPF, which is in line to receive $65 million for the fiscal 2019. The request also includes $351.3 million for nuclear materials management.
