The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has brought online the second melter at the multibillion-dollar facility designed to solidify liquid radioactive waste into a solid glass-like form, the agency said this week.
DOE said in a Tuesday press release that the second 300-ton melter at Bechtel’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant has come online. This comes a couple of weeks after the melter reached its operating temperature of 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit on March 23.
The move marks a step toward treating waste at the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste Facilities at the plant, DOE said.
Work crews will maintain the melter at the operating temperature for a while before frit, or small glass beads, are put into the melter to make a pool of molten glass, DOE said in the release. Subsequently the startup heaters in the top of the melter will be taken out and replaced with bubblers that circulate air in the molten glass and keep the mix at an even temperature, DOE said.
Months of testing, using a non-radioactive simulant, are ahead for both melters, DOE said. The agency plans to start making glass from the less radioactive tank waste at Hanford in 2025. There are about 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks at the former plutonium production complex.
Bechtel’s plant construction contract, which started in December 2000 and runs through September, pending an extension, is currently valued at $15.5 billion.
