A contractor at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has finished moving 219,000 gallons of high-level waste from a leaking tank at the H Tank Farm, according to an update filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
Savannah River Remediation transferred the waste from Tank 15 to Tank 13, according to the DNFSB report on site activity during the week of July 6. This stopped an “active leak” by reducing the waste below the location of the leak.
In an Aiken Standard newspaper article Sunday, Energy Department officials said the leak, which was discovered in June, posed no threat to SRS workers, the public, or the environment.
“Tank 15 is an old-style tank that had 26 previously identified leak sites,” according to a weekly inspector site report filed with the DNFSB on June 15.
The contractor used digital photography to identify six new leak sites, although only one of them was active. The SRR remedy was to pump enough waste out of the tank to lower the level below the leak site.
Tank 15’s annulus, a pan meant to contain such leaks, caught the waste, the newspaper reported.
Savannah River Remediation also recently filed a sinkhole in asphalt, more than 3 feet deep, on the east side of the he 2H Evaporator at the Savannah River Site. The sinkhole was discovered in June.
