KNOXVILLE, Tenn.– Some large infrastructure projects in the U.S. Energy Department’s nationwide nuclear cleanup complex should be completed in the next couple years, an agency official said Wednesday.
That should include startup of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory, along with installation of a new ventilation system for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Jeff Griffin, associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, cited the milestones during his keynote address to the Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association (ETEBA) Business Opportunities and Technical Conference.
The new ventilation system, worth up to $500 million, including a new utility shaft and fans, will more than triple the underground airflow at WIPP. That would enable simultaneous salt mining, waste emplacement, and maintenance for the first time since an underground radiation leak in February 2014 forced the facility offline for nearly three years.
The $2.3 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) should begin operations in December. It will remove cesium from the salt waste sludge held in underground storage at Savannah River and transfer the remaining salt solution to Saltstone Disposal Units.
Originally supposed to be deployed in 2012, the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit is supposed to treat 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing liquid radioactive and hazardous waste at Idaho so it can ultimately be shipped out of state. The project, currently estimated at $1 billion, is expected to start up in 2020.
The nuclear cleanup office recognizes that it has many billions of dollars in environmental liability that must be addressed, Griffin said. The Energy Department’s total environmental liability was $494 billion as of fiscal 2018, the latest available figure. Of that, $377 billion came from the 16 nuclear sites administered by the Office of Environmental Management.
