The Savannah River Site’s $2.3 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) remains on track to begin operations by the end of this year, despite a more conservative unofficial date of May 2020 cited in a document prepared by the site’s liquid waste contractor.
Neither DOE nor salt waste contractor Parsons, have announced any further delay in startup of the SWPF, which will process millions of gallons of radioactive salt waste generated by Cold War nuclear weapons production at the 310-square-mile facility near Aiken, S.C.
The target date remains December 2019, Site Manager Michael Budney said at a SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) meeting this month. That is a year later than the Energy Department and Parsons initially wanted to commence operations, but still ahead of the contracted January 2021 deadline.
However, Revision 21 of SRS Liquid Waste System Plan, prepared by Savannah River Remediation (SRR), projects a May 2020 startup for the Salt Waste Processing Facility. The plan is an ever-changing projection for schedules and missions at the site, based on availability of equipment, work scopes, and funding conditions.
Revision 21, which was released in January 2019, was discussed at an SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) meeting this month.
The latest projections in Revision 21 were made under the assumption that waste missions at SRS will receive the same amount of dollars they received in fiscal 2019. The document also assumes equipment and facilities are operating at full capacity, avoiding long-term outages or other significant interruptions in work.
The document is unofficial because Savannah River Site and SRR, which collaborate in preparing the plan, understand that all of these factors will likely change. But establishing projections helps support budget development and mission planning for future years.
This relates to SWPF because facilities in the site-wide liquid waste system – encompassing other waste processing facilities and the storage tank farms – are all tied in together. So an outage or malfunction in one part of the system can impact SWPF and the rest of the facilities.
The waste plan projects SWPF will begin processing at a rate of 6 million gallons per year. Starting in the second year of operations, and through the end of the liquid waste program, the plant would process 9 million gallons annually. Today, there are roughly 35 million gallons of liquid waste stored in more 30 underground tanks at SRS. About 90 percent of that is salt waste and the rest is sludge.
In 2002, Parsons inked a $2 billion contract with DOE to design, build, test, and start up the 140-square-foot Salt Waste Processing Facility no later than January 2021. Construction was completed in June 2016, and Parsons began the testing and commissioning phases of the mission.
Currently, the SWPF is undergoing cold commissioning, in which nonradioactive products are run through the facility to test its performance and efficiency.
The site spokesperson did not respond to questions on what changes to SWPF readiness, or any other factors, contributed to May 2020 being listed as a startup date.
The spokesperson also declined questions on a spat with Parsons earlier this year over disincentive fees. In March, the Energy Department told the company it would have to pay $33 million in disincentive fees due to missed deadlines and overspending at SWPF. The contractor fought back, stating it had to push back target dates multiple times due to unforeseen equipment issues that DOE was not taking into account.
Neither party will say if they would take legal action in the dispute, or if the fees have been levied.
