The Department of Energy has initiated a major addition to the liquid waste mission at the Department of Savannah River Site in South Carolina, starting with a nine-month trial run.
Officials at the 310-square-mile facility near Aiken, S.C., said the tank closure cesium removal (TCCR) mission should process hundreds of thousands of gallons of salt waste by the end of October. The operation will remove cesium from the salt waste, making the waste suitable for permanent storage on site.
The Energy Department awarded Westinghouse Electric Co. $12.4 million in July 2016 to operate TCCR at the site’s tank farms. It is unclear how much was spent preparing the removal process for operations.
Cesium removal is major part of salt waste treatment at SRS due to its highly radioactive nature. Waste from two Savannah River storage tanks will undergo the removal process during the nine-month demonstration. Once the process is the complete, the final solution of salt waste will be taken to the Saltstone Production Facility for permanent disposal. Meanwhile, the cesium and the materials used to treat the waste will be taken to a temporary location for close monitoring before being placed in interim storage location on site.
Tank closure cesium removal is expected to process between 600,000 and 750,000 gallons of waste during the demonstration. At the end, DOE and liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) will evaluate its effectiveness and decide if the process should continue. The Savannah River Site did not provide details on how much cesium is expected to be removed during the demonstration or potential full-scale program.
Savannah River houses about 35 million gallons of Cold War-era liquid waste, stored in more than 40 underground tanks. About 90 percent of that volume is salt waste, which has been treated for years using a pilot process that also includes cesium removal.
