The Savannah River Site is on pace to meet its fiscal 2017 goal to double-stack and safely store 200 canisters of treated radioactive waste, according to a site official.
In October, liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) began stacking canisters of vitrified waste on top of each other in Glass Waste Storage Building 1 (GWSB 1). Before the waste is vitrified, or converted to a glass form, it poses a much bigger threat due to its high level of radioactivity.
The waste dates to nuclear weapons production at the Department of Energy facility during the Cold War. All told, SRS is home to about 35 million gallons of waste, much of which must be converted and stored in these canisters.
The double-stacking initiative began in October 2016. It costs about $3 million per year and is expected to last through fiscal 2023. To advance the initiative, workers had to temporarily relocate canisters of the waste from GWSB 1 to GWSB 2 to convert the first building for double-stacking.
By double-stacking the canisters, the site is adding more space to temporarily store waste. SRR spokesman Dean Campbell said by email that, as of Monday, 129 canisters were in “double-stack” positions. “The goal to double-stack 200 canisters is on target for Fiscal Year 2017,” he wrote. The fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
The canisters stacked in GWSB 1 are filled with waste that was processed through the site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), which heats waste and a special glass product to create a molten glass. The final product is a waste form suitable for long-term storage at a repository. According to a January 2017 update, DWPF has produced more than 4,100 canisters of the waste form.
Each canister is 10 feet tall. There are 2,254 one-canister storage positons in GWSB 1. SRS will literally double that capacity and make 4,508 spaces to store waste. To accommodate two canisters stacked vertically, the 21-foot-deep holding slots must be modified, Savannah River Remediation has said. For example, the crossbar base support where the canisters rest will have to be removed. Also, a thick, concrete shield plug that guards against radiation will be replaced by a thinner, denser cast-iron shield plug, which will provide equivalent radiation shielding and structural support.
Double-stacking is expected to provide adequate storage through 2026. Storage at SRS is only a temporary solution as the nation searches for a federal repository to permanently store waste from SRS and other DOE sites across the country. That location would have been Yucca Mountain – a Nevada site about 100 miles from Las Vegas. The federal government has spent $13 billion on Yucca Mountain since DOE began drilling at the mountain in 1994 and President George W. Bush signed off on the repository in 2002. But that all changed in 2010 when President Barack Obama ordered work on Yucca to cease.
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and other lawmakers have denounced the Yucca cancellation. In January, Wilson filed the Sensible Nuclear Waste Disposition Act, which would prevent DOE from constructing a new defense waste repository until the NRC has ruled on a license for Yucca. “The NRC’s own safety evaluation has found that Yucca Mountain far exceeds the regulatory standards and would not be a threat to the local population of Nevada,” Wilson said in prepared comments.
The bill has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee.
