Savannah River Remediation (SRR) has hired Westinghouse Electric Co. to enhance cesium removal from the highly radioactive liquid waste in storage tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Department of Energy announced this week that the fixed-price subcontract is worth $12.4 million. Westinghouse will design, build, and deliver the equipment for the tank closure cesium removal (TCCR) process, which is expected to be operational by late spring 2018.
TCCR is an ion exchange process that removes unwanted charged particles from a liquid stream, in this case the liquid waste at the DOE facility. The majority of radioactive components in liquid salt waste at SRS is cesium. Savannah River Remediation, the site’s liquid waste contractor, reported that TCCR will remove the cesium from the salt waste and make the liquid salt waste suitable for final disposition at the Saltstone Disposal Facility, which consists of concrete vaults.
Westinghouse is expected to deliver the equipment for TCCR in about 15 months, and the process is due to be operational in about two years after installation and commissioning activities are complete. The initial TCCR demonstration will treat the salt waste currently in Tank 10, which will be in the closure process around that time. “If successful, TCCR can be deployed to treat the salt waste in other tanks and help accelerate cleanup activities in the SRS Liquid Waste System,” according to SRR spokesman Dean Campbell. Salt waste accounts for about 90 percent of the 36 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste at SRS, which dates to the Cold War era and sits in aging storage tanks.
Following Westinghouse’s role in designing and building the technology, the SRS liquid waste contractor will install and operate the system. The current liquid waste contract is held by SRR, an LLC run by parent companies AECOM, Bechtel, CH2M, and BWXT. The contract expires in June 2017, and would be replaced by a new contract that is expected to be worth $6 billion over 10 years. The Department of Energy is considering bid proposals for the deal.
