Under current projections, the Department of Energy could process nearly all of the salt waste inventory from 43 high-level radioactive waste tanks at the Savannah River Site by 2033, the top official for the agency’s Office of Environmental Management there said recently.
The 2033 date cited by Michael Budney, manager of the Savannah River Operations Office, during the annual Radwaste Summit on Nov. 5 is further down the road than the 2031 target DOE had eyed earlier this year. At one point, DOE hoped the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), built by Parsons, would reach 6-million gallons of throughput during its first full year of operation.
In October, DOE officials told a South Carolina nuclear advisory panel the facility will probably handle only four million gallons during its first year or so of operation.
After a “next generation solvent” becomes available for use at SWPF in the near future, the facility should then be able to process the 6-million gallons annually, Budney said.
DOE expects SWPF “to process up to 9 million gallons of waste per year by FY 2024 following the implementation of the Next-Generation Solvent,” according to the SRS Strategic Vision document the Office of Environmental Management (EM) published in April.
Nevertheless, the 2.3-million gallons already processed at SWPF easily beats Savannah River Site’s earlier salt waste processing figures, which was only about 1 million gallons per year, Budney said during a remote presentation to the summit, which was sponsored by ExchangeMonitor Publications in Summerlin, Nev.
The SWPF separates highly radioactive contaminants, such as cesium and strontium, from the less radioactive salt solution from the tanks. The highly-radioactive material is then sent to Savannah River’s Defense Waste Processing Facility for vitrification into a glass form. The decontaminated salt solution is then sent to the mammoth, above-ground saltstone disposal units at the site.
Parsons, which built the SWPF, is running it for the first full year of operation and is then scheduled to turn it over to the liquid waste contractor, currently Amenum-led Savannah River Remediation.
Barring a successful bid protest, Savannah River Remediation will be succeeded by BWX Technologies-led Savannah River Mission Completion under a contract award announced in late October that is potentially worth $21-billion. Savannah River Remediation has been on the job since July 2009 and it is currently slated to stay through January under its contract agreement now valued at $7.5 billion.
Because the new contractor team could be in place up to 15 years, it means most of the liquid waste mission at Savannah River should be concluded under a single contract, Budney said.
