Vitrification & Grout

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state on Monday completed filling with grout the PUREX Plant tunnel that was discovered partially collapsed on May 9. The tunnel holds eight railcars loaded with highly radioactively contaminated equipment from the shuttered plutonium extraction plant. “Since a portion of the tunnel’s roof collapsed last […]

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state on Monday completed filling with grout the PUREX Plant tunnel that was discovered partially collapsed on May 9. The tunnel holds eight railcars loaded with highly radioactively contaminated equipment from the shuttered plutonium extraction plant. “Since a portion of the tunnel’s roof collapsed last […]

Crews at the Hanford Site in Washington state by Thursday morning had injected 61 truckloads of grout into the PUREX Plant waste storage tunnel that was discovered on May 9 to have partially collapsed. Work was scheduled to continue Thursday night, when traffic would be light as cement trucks hauled the grout to the underground […]

Crews at the Hanford Site in Washington state on Tuesday night started injecting grout to stabilize the Hanford PUREX Plant waste storage tunnel discovered last spring to be partially collapsed, but halted work as some dirt began to subside into the tunnel, the Department of Energy said Wednesday. After the breach in the top of […]

Demolition of the shuttered vitrification facility at the West Valley Demonstration Project near Buffalo, N.Y., got underway last week, according to the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM). The West Valley Demonstration Project involves cleanup of a former commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant that shut down in the early 1970s. Part of the project, […]

The partially collapsed waste storage tunnel at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state should be additionally stabilized by the end of the year, cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. said Tuesday. The company announced the award of a $2.8 million subcontract to Intermech Inc., of Richland, Wash., to fill PUREX Plant […]

The lead liquid waste contractor at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., on July 18 finished building the Saltstone Disposal Unit- (SDU) 6: the first of seven planned 30-million-plus-gallon tanks that will store radioactive salt waste left over from processing some 35 million gallons of Cold War liquid waste, the Department of Energy said […]

The Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., has finished building the Saltstone Disposal Unit- (SDU) 6: the first of seven planned 30-million-plus-gallon tanks that will store radioactive salt waste left over from processing some 35 million gallons of Cold War liquid waste, the agency said in a Friday […]

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 […]

Bechtel National workers have completed assembling the first melter at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant, the Department of Energy announced Thursday. Completion of the project earned the contractor $4.275 million in incentive pay. The melter is one of two that will be used at the plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, which DOE aims to begin […]

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 […]

Two Savannah River Remediation workers were contaminated with beta and gamma radiation at the Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility this week, according to an official Department of Energy account of the incident. The incident occurred Wednesday when one employee spilled a sample of liquid waste pulled from an oil drum. The sample splattered […]

The Department of Energy is making plans to fill the partially collapsed waste tunnel at the Hanford PUREX plant with grout, the agency said in a Wednesday meeting with state regulators and site contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation Company. Personnel at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., discovered a 20-foot-long breach in the Purex tunnel May […]

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board will meet on June 21 to discuss the Energy Department’s research into the staying power of the borosilicate glass the agency wants to use to immobilize high-level liquid waste at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The meeting will be held at the Courtyard Richland Columbia Point hotel in […]

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board will meet on June 21 to discuss the Energy Department’s research into the staying power of the borosilicate glass the agency wants to use to immobilize high-level liquid waste at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The meeting will be held at the Courtyard Richland Columbia Point hotel in […]

The book would close on a whistleblower lawsuit that Bechtel National and AECOM settled last year for $125 million, under a final stipulation for dismissal the three plaintiffs filed Tuesday. The filing is mostly a formality, as the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington state had already dismissed much of the case […]

The book would close on a whistleblower lawsuit that Bechtel National and AECOM settled last year for $125 million, under a final stipulation for dismissal the three plaintiffs filed Tuesday. The filing is mostly a formality, as the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington state had already dismissed much of the case in […]

  Repairs of a key waste processing facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site remain on schedule for completion in 2017, but the work is taking a toll on short-term efforts to rid the facility of radioactive waste, officials reaffirmed Monday. In the interim, there is no liquid waste processing going on at […]

Repairs of a key waste processing facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site remain on schedule for completion in 2017, but the work is taking a toll on short-term efforts to rid the facility of radioactive waste, officials reaffirmed Monday. All liquid waste processing is on hold at SRS following the failure of Melter […]

The first three technical issues that have prevented construction on key parts of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant since 2012 have been resolved, according to the Department of Energy. Work continues on five additional technical issues identified after then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu directed an in-depth look that year at possible problems at the plant. […]

The first three technical issues that have prevented construction on key parts of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant since 2012 have been resolved, according to the Department of Energy. Work continues on five additional technical issues identified after then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu directed an in-depth look in 2012 at possible problems at the plant. […]

The Savannah River Site’s main waste processing facility will be offline for much of the year to allow for replacement of a key component. The Energy Department said on Feb. 3 that site liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is preparing to replace a melter in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), which converts […]

The liquid waste management contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is preparing to replace a melter in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), DOE said in a press release Friday. A Melter 2 heater stopped functioning on Feb. 1 and cannot be repaired, the release says. Savannah River Remediation is expected to need about […]

  The Hanford Site’s Office of River Protection has obtained samples of glass up to 2,000 years old to help it learn more about how the substance ages as the Department of Energy facility prepares to vitrify, or glassify, tank waste. The ancient glass is being studied to predict how glassified waste might age over […]

A waste disposal project at the Savannah River Site took another step forward recently when the facility’s liquid waste contractor conducted a successful leak tightness test for Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 (SDU 6). SDU 6 is the first 30-million gallon, megavolume salt waste disposal concrete unit constructed at the Department of Energy site in South […]

A waste disposal project at the Savannah River Site took another step forward recently when the facility’s liquid waste contractor conducted a successful leak tightness test for Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 (SDU 6). SDU 6 is the first 30-million gallon, megavolume salt waste disposal unit constructed at the Department of Energy site in South Carolina. Once complete, […]

  Testing and commissioning of the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) is 36 percent complete, and the plant remains on pace to start-up by December 2018, an Energy Department official said this week. Following more than a year of high-stakes negotiations starting in September 2015, the Energy Department and the South Carolina […]

The Washington state Ecology Department on Monday opened a 60-day public comment period for locals to weigh in on a permit modification Bechtel National and the Energy Department need to start treating radioactive waste at the Hanford Site as soon as 2022. If granted, the modification will smooth the way for Bechtel, prime contractor on the […]

The last major piece of equipment for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility arrived this week and was placed in the plant. The facility over the summer received two of the three major components of melter off-gas system. The final component of the system to arrive was the caustic scrubber manufactured by […]

Twenty workers at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site will swap badges to Savannah River Remediation from Parsons to ensure liquid waste treatment at the Salt Waste Processing Facility begins around 2019, as scheduled. The AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR) “recently chose to hire 20 Radiological Protection Inspectors through Parsons, the SWPF [Salt Waste Processing […]