The Department of Energy’s top nuclear cleanup official will be on hand July 21 for an official ribbon cutting at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., construction on which was officially declared complete last week.
Monica Regalbuto, DOE’s assistant secretary for environmental management, will join other DOE and contractor officials for a roughly three-hour tour and ribbon cutting. Other notable participants include: Jack Craig, DOE’s manager for Savannah River; Anthony Leketa, executive vice president for SWPF prime Parsons; and Frank Sheppard, Parsons senior vice president and SWPF project manager.
The ribbon cutting is on the slate for 10 a.m., with a brief media availability to follow around 11 a.m., according to a notice from DOE.
Parsons declared construction of the facility complete in April. DOE took more than a month to verify that, then announced the milestone publicly on June 7.
SWPF cost about $1.3 billion to build over eight years. The total project cost of the facility is estimated at $2.3 billion. SWPF is due to begin radioactive waste treatment in 2018, about three years later than a regulatory deadline still in force under a federal facilities agreement between DOE, South Carolina, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Talks on the agreement between DOE and the state have been ongoing since November, spokespersons for the agency and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control have said.
SWPF is designed to treat 95 million gallons of salt waste at Savannah River. Clearing salt waste out of the site’s tank farms is a crucial part of retiring old tanks at the site, where DOE has about 36 million gallons of liquid waste stored underground.