Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
4/25/2014
Though budget cuts to Savannah River’s liquid waste program raised concerns last year about missed high-level waste tank milestones, a funding boost and efficiencies developed by contractor Savannah River Remediation will allow for closure of two tanks in the near future. SRR so far has closed four of the site’s high-level waste tanks—two last year and two in 2012—but last year reduced budgets and delays in the startup of the new Salt Waste Processing Facility caused future projected tank closures to be pushed far beyond regulatory commitments to South Carolina. “When I showed up here in September, any further tank closure activities had been moved well out into the future,” SRR President and Project Manger Ken Rueter told WC Monitor this week. “Our budget had been reduced down to essentially the $380 million level, about a $70 million reduction, so outside of waste treatment activities there wasn’t much going on with salt disposition interface projects and there was essentially going to be no activities on closure.”
Last year was tough for SRR: After the proposed cuts in the Fiscal Year 2014 budget, the contractor suffered layoffs of hundreds of workers and extended furloughs as a result of the government shutdown and funding situation. Rueter joined SRR last fall in the midst of those issues and subsequently focused on efficiencies and work prioritization that resulted in $14 million in savings. As closure was wrapping up for two tanks in December those savings were pumped into efforts to close Tank 16, which previously had its closure schedule pushed beyond its Fiscal Year 2015 regulatory commitment. Then the program saw a $39 million funding boost when Congress passed a spending bill in January, allowing closure preparations to also begin on Tank 12, which has an FY15 commitment as well. DOE’s radioactive liquid tank waste program funding stands at $551 million in the FY’15 request, compared to $553 million in the FY’14 request and $613 million in FY’13 funding.
Tank 16 to Meet Milestone, Tank 12 Uncertain
Tank 16 is now on track to meet the FY’15 milestone, and SRR is expecting that closure of Tank 12 will be “significantly accelerated” by about four years over last year’s expectations, Rueter said. “Now we are putting that effort into Tank 12 and we are now working the full execution schedule now with DOE and the state with regard to what different scenarios and different options we have so that the Department can make a decision on risk versus reward and value and ultimately land on a spot,” he said.
However, Tank 12 will likely not meet the FY’15 deadline, according to DOE Savannah River Manager Dave Moody. “Can we recover the schedule on tank 12? No. Can we be filling it when we had planned to be completed? The answer to that is yes. But I’m not seeking an acceleration that would allow us to recover that schedule completely. That’s probably not going to be possible,” Moody told WC Monitor last week.
State Says ‘Milestones Still in Jeopardy’
The reduced liquid waste budget last year caused officials with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control to say that reduced funding will make it “virtually impossible” for DOE to meet tank closure milestones, and warn of hefty fines if milestones are missed (WC Monitor, Vol. 24 No.34). Though SRR has since accelerated work on two tanks, the closure schedule for 16 other tanks remains unclear. “While DHEC is encouraged by the increase in FY15 liquid waste funding and SRS efforts to mitigate delays in tank closure, the tank closure milestones are still in jeopardy,” DHEC Federal Facilities Liaison Shelly Wilson said this week in a written response. “DOE has gambled with a successful risk reduction program by starving recent budgets and treatment systems. More substantial budget increases coupled with innovative waste treatment are needed to get tank closures back on track to meet regulatory milestones.”
Moody: Delays Due to SWPF Uncertainty
The major factor for future schedule uncertainty remains delays in startup of the SWPF, which is designed to greatly increase the site’s tank waste processing capability. It had been expected to begin operations this year, but construction completion has been delayed to 2016 and there is no schedule for startup. “You could say that it’s not necessarily budget but it’s the delays in startup of Salt Waste Processing that puts those out year milestones in jeopardy,” Moody said. “Are there options to recover from that? Yes, there are. I just don’t know what the funding profile looks like and whether there are options to recover if the funds are available.” He added: “If you can predict what the budget is out into ‘16 and ‘17 and ‘18, boy your crystal ball is a lot clearer than mine.”
Moody said that there have been initial discussions with South Carolina on the issue. “We are committed to bring tanks 12 and 16 on board as soon as possible and we have communicated to them that there have been some challenges with 12. You know, the out years that relied on [the] Salt Waste Processing [Facility] will be a challenge for us. They obviously know the challenges that we have. We have not provided them with any concrete dates in the out year commitments,” he said.
Savings Result From Lean Manufacturing Initiatives
The $14 million in SRR savings came about largely as a result of lean manufacturing initiatives, Rueter said. “It was taking a look at our work planning, work control work release process and making the back end of that more efficient. Another area that the lean manufacturing team looked at was in the area of tank closure itself and actually projectizing and productizing our closure process for tanks to establish it in more of a production methodology,” he said. “Waves of teams” reviewed the elements of tank closure such as sampling, isolation, grout system set up, the regulatory process and others to find potential savings. “We implemented those approached within the construct of the SRR project enterprise now and have a specific focus on closure as a project line itself. So those things altogether culminated in a significant number of savings for us just in the first half of this fiscal year,” he said.
The savings were then implemented through an integrated priority approach. “That allowed us to make the most efficient decision to make ensure that the completion of tanks 5 and 6 in December were close coupled with the resumption of tanks 16 and 12. That had two critical elements to it. One, we could now focus on the highest priority activities associated with the resumption of those two tanks,” Rueter said. He added that it also had the benefit of transferring workers from those tanks directly to the next effort. “There was a direct human capital or people benefit. … We didn’t then experience the inefficiency and the cost associated with demobilizing a project just to go in and remobilize them in a different location, or in some cases we’re not assured that these people would come back,” he said.
Other savings were implemented prior to the funding cuts, such as adding more waste to vitrified canisters in the Defense Waste Processing Facility. “The melters are working extremely well and so we have been able to add more waste to the canisters so we’re getting a bigger bang for our buck there. As we now close four tanks we’ve gained efficiencies in that process as well,” Moody said. “So it’s building up those efficiencies in various areas across the whole liquid waste program. … We have a strong partnership between DOE and SRR. So they certainly were SRR proposals and we are engaged in evaluating those proposals and accepted them. It also engaged Savannah River National Laboratory as well. It’s really the partnership that’s paying dividends.”
Next Generation Solvent Could Double Processing
SRR has also successfully implemented a new solvent into the interim salt waste processing capability now in operation—the Actinide Removal Process/Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit (ARP/MCU)—that could potentially double processing rates. The system went into an outage late last year, and since early 2014 has been running the Next Generation Solvent, which has proven comparably stable to the old solvent. So far the goal has been increased cesium removal for saltstone disposed of on site, and it has been 10 times more effective than the old solvent. “So the bottom line is that at least 10 times less cesium or curies would stay in the state of South Carolina. … That was a very positive outcome,” Rueter said.
However, next year upgrades will be made to the ARP/MCU system that will allow for greatly increased processing rates. “NGS is much more robust in its ability to have higher processing rates. It can collect the cesium quicker, it has improved dynamics. As a result, we believe we can see eight-plus gallons per minute,” Rueter said. That could potentially double SRR’s one-year record of 1.3 million gallons of waste processed. The higher processing rate would also help with the liquid waste integration readiness: preparing the contractor for startup of SWPF. “As we empty more that then readies the system for the large volumes of feed and preparation of that feed for SWPF,” Rueter said.
Progress Made on Mega Saltstone Vault
On the back end of the process, the contractor is also making progress on construction of a new massive 30 million gallon saltstone disposal unit 6, several times the size of the units currently being used for on site disposal. The Department requested $37 million for the project in FY’15 with an estimated total project cost of $143 million. “That’s progressing very well,” Rueter said. “The basemat and the integrated liner complete. The principle tank constructor is mobilized and will begin pouring the tank wall.”
