The Energy Department this week issued the final request for proposals for a small-business-only contract to provide technical support for a legally mandated environmental review DOE must conduct before finalizing a two-phase plan to decontaminate and demolish facilities at the West Valley Demonstration Project: a former spent-fuel reprocessing plant in upstate New York.
The five-year contract now up for grabs includes two one-year options, according to the final solicitation. Proposals are due by Sept. 1. DOE thinks the job will require a mostly technical staff of about 15 hands, led by a principal project manager and including engineers and technical editors.
The winner will help establish the framework for a supplemental environmental impact statement due to be published in draft form in 2019. DOE will rely on the document to determine its exact approach to the second and final phase of West Valley demolition. A formal decision on the phase two strategy is due May 12, 2020, according to the just-released request for proposals for technical assistance.
Phase two will include whatever demolition is not completed under phase one, which began in 2011. CH2M BWXT West Valley West Valley is handling phase one demolition under a roughly $525 million West Valley Demonstration Project Interim End State contract that runs through spring 2020.
Phase one calls for removal of: the main plant processing building; the vitrification facility used to immobilize once-liquid high-level waste generated during spent-fuel reprocessing in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and the source area for a 650-foot-by-1,640-foot groundwater plume at the site’s north plateau.
The University of South Carolina (USC) has received an $8 million grant for research aimed at speeding up nuclear waste treatment at the Savannah River Site and other facilities where waste is being stored. The goal is to reconfigure the way the waste is stored.
The university announced on July 27 that it had received the grant the Department of Energy and that it will work with the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), Brookhaven National Laboratory, Clemson University, and others on the research. Work began on Aug. 1. The grant will primarily be used to pay researchers who are working on the project.
Roughly 36 million gallons of radioactive liquid are housed in more than 40 waste storage tanks at the Savannah River Site. The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) is used to break down the material and convert it into a less radioactive glassy form – a process known as vitrification. “It’s a slow process and the Department of Energy thinks it will take much too long,” Hanno zur Loye, a chemistry professor and researcher in the USC College of Arts and Sciences, said in an interview.
Loye said the goal is to find specialized ceramics, metal-organic composite materials, and nanoparticles to safely contain the nuclear waste for thousands of years. Over time, the radioactive isotopes would decay, removing the threat. Research is in the early stages, so there isn’t much more information on the type of materials that are needed to complete the process. Scientists who focus on characterization will work over the next several months to identify the best type of materials to use. Loye said whatever material is employed must be durable since radioactive decay takes tens of thousands of year. “It’s important to put them into a very safe material that isn’t affected by groundwater or other elements,” he said.
Last year, the Energy Department said the projection for completion of liquid waste cleanup at SRS have been moved from 2042 to 2065, with cost projections increasing to about $25 billion more than the original estimate. Officials previously estimated that the program would cost $60 to $70 billion. But cost projections reported last year estimated between $91 billion and $109 billion.
