The Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina returned to service Feb. 11, and since then has processed about 127,000 gallons of salt waste, a DOE spokesperson said in a Friday email.
Earlier this month, DOE confirmed the plant built by Parsons was poised to resume operations after technical safety concerns and some operational challenges kept the plant out of service since late October.
At the end of April, Parsons’ $2.3-billion contract to design, build and commission the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) will come to an end. The company has spent about a year running early operations at the plant, which is key to emptying the radioactive waste tanks at the DOE complex on the Georgia state line.
“We showed that all the goes-intos and comes-out-ofs work,” Parsons vice president and project manager for SWPF Mike Pittman told the Citizens Advisory Board for Savannah River last month.
While saying the important thing is the plant works, Pittman and DOE officials acknowledged the SWPF came in well below DOE’s lofty first-year goals of processing between four and six million gallons of salt waste. It processed 2.4 million gallons in its inaugural year.
The Parsons executive also said his company is ready to turn over the keys to BWX Technologies-led Savannah River Mission Completion on March 27. The BWXT-led group is succeeding Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation in charge of liquid waste and other cleanup chores at the site.
The DOE expects the SWPF will allow Savannah River to process 43 tanks containing high-level waste by 2033. The plant processes the tank waste by separating out the highly radioactive cesium and strontium from the less radioactive salt solution. Post-SWPF the highly-radioactive material is vitrified into a glass form at Savannah River’s Defense Waste Processing Facility. Above-ground saltstone disposal units take the salt solution.
