The Savannah River Site liquid waste tank farms hold less than 35 million gallons of waste for the first time since 1999, according to a Jan. 9 Facebook post from Savannah River Remediation (SRR), the Department of Energy facility’s liquid waste contractor.
Since taking over the contract in 2009, SRR’s goal has been to rid the site of more than 36 million gallons of radioactive waste that dates to the Cold War era. “Reducing the risk posed by legacy liquid waste, the byproduct of decades of work processing nuclear materials for national defense, is a key mission,” SRR stated in the Facebook post.
SRR has operationally closed eight of the site’s 51 waste storage vessels by removing hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid waste from each tank, and then pouring a cement mixture into the empty tanks. The waste removal process includes mixing the radioactive material with water to mobilize the waste, making it easier to remove.
About 90 percent of the tank volume is salt waste, and the rest is sludge waste. The two components undergo a separations process so they can be treated separately.
