The Savannah River Site is on pace to restart liquid waste operations “toward the end of the year,” according to a SRS Facebook post that also detailed progress in switching out melters at one of the site’s main waste processing facilities.
The update Monday says Melter 3 recently arrived at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), which converts highly radioactive waste stored at the Department of Energy site in South Carolina into a solid glass form for storage. The facility is designed to process over 30 million gallons of sludge and salt waste stored in more than 40 waste storage tanks, a byproduct of Cold War nuclear weapons operations at SRS. To date, the DWPF has solidified approximately 61 million curies of radioactivity and poured over 16 million pounds of glass. It is expected to remain in service for another 20 years.
Melter 3 is a 75-ton refractory-lined vessel that will receive the high-level waste, then combine it with a mixture known as borosilicate frit to remove contamination. When heated in the melter, these elements form a molten glass, which is then poured into stainless-steel canisters for safe storage.
The vessel is replacing Melter 2, which could not be repaired after its heater stopped functioning on Feb. 1. Site liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is expected to need six months to install the new melter, at a cost of about $3 million.
A DOE spokesperson confirmed in February that liquid waste operations at the Savannah River Site would be suspended until the DWPF repair is complete. “There is a short-term impact to sludge and salt production since DWPF is involved in both processes but poses no additional risks. However, in terms of the lifecycle of liquid waste work, this outage will have little, if any, impact. These outages are factored into the Liquid Waste System Plan.”
