Savannah River Remediation expects to save about $10 million by repairing, rather than replacing, a piece of equipment essential for chemical separations operations at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a company executive told a citizens group Monday.
The equipment, a nearly 30-foot-high evaporator pot that last year leaked some 3,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste, will cost $1.9 million to repair, William Barnes said during a meeting of the Savannah River Citizens Advisory Board in Augusta, Ga. Replacing the pot would cost $10 million to $14 million to replace, Barnes estimated.
Savannah River Remediation, the liquid waste management prime at the DOE site, plans to repair the 3H Evaporator Pot by welding a 250-pound steel cap to its leaky, conical bottom. The cap should be in place and the pot operational by Dec. 31, Barnes said during Monday’s webcast meeting.
A steam jet inside the 3H pot churned a hole in the bottom of the vessel, Barnes said. The jet, a common feature of several evaporator pots at the site, is used to break up solid waste that settles at the bottom of the receptacle. The 3H pot was intended to operate for 30 years but broke after only about 15, Barnes said. The vessel is sound except for its leaky bottom, he added, and the cap being procured now is expected to last another 15 years.
The 3H evaporator pot was built by Joseph Oat Corp. of Camden, N.J. The vessel helps create space in Savannah River Site’s 395-acre H-Area Tank Farm, where 29 tanks constantly fill up with waste generated by the nearby H-Canyon chemical separations facility. Without working evaporator pots, operations at H-Canyon would grind to a halt around 2019, DOE has said.
During the Cold War, H-Canyon produced fissile materials for nuclear weapons. Now, among other things, it turns highly enriched uranium into low-enriched uranium that can eventually be used by commercial nuclear power plants.
The liquid waste from these processes includes thinner, less-radioactive waste and more highly radioactive sludge. Evaporator pots boil the water out of both types of waste, which creates more space in the H-Tank Farm. The 3H pot can create about 1 million gallons of tank-farm space a year, Barnes said.
The waste from the leak was contained in the cell where the 3H Evaporator Pot sits, DOE and Savannah River Remediation have said. Neither the outside environment nor any personnel were contaminated.
