The Department of Energy’s top nuclear-cleanup official on Thursday will mark the operational closure of Tank 12 at the Savannah River Site, and the 20th anniversary of Defense Waste Processing Facility operations at the facility, the liquid waste cleanup contractor for the Aiken, S.C., site announced Thursday.
Tank 12 is the second at Savannah River’s H Area tank farm to close. Tank 16, another H Area tank, was closed in September 2015. Tank 12 can store about 1 million gallons of waste, and will be the eighth overall tank that contractor Savannah River Remediation, an AECOM-led conglomerate, has closed since taking on the main cleanup job at the site in 2009. The company has closed down six other tanks from the site’s F Area tank farm.
The tank was supposed to be filled by now, but DOE renegotiated its deadlines with the Environmental Protection Agency to delay the end of the job until later this year.
The Defense Waste Processing Facility, meanwhile, is expected to operate for another 20 years. Over its 40-year lifetime, the plant is due to convert some 30 million gallons of liquid waste into about 7,800 canisters of radioactive glass in a process known as vitrification.
Savannah River Remediation’s cleanup contract runs through June 30, 2017, and is worth up to $4.1 billion.
DOE plans to release a final solicitation for a follow-on cleanup contract either this month, or in June. The eventual winner of the competition will begin work in March 2017, and be responsible for: processing 72 million gallons of salt waste at the site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility, including 45 million gallons in the base period; closing nine liquid waste tanks, including six in the base period; and cleaning up 11 tanks’ worth of bulk waste, including nine in the base period. Bulk waste includes sludge from the site’s liquid waste tanks.
Just about all the major industrial partners on the Savannah River Remediation team have said they plan to bid on the follow-on work.
