DOE approves start of salt waste processing facility at Savannah River Site

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it has granted Critical Decision-4 (CD-4) and Authorization To Operate (ATO) approval Aug. 17 for the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS), which is a 310-square-mile DOE site based in South Carolina.

The approval authorizes “hot” or radioactive operations to begin at the facility. CD-4 signals project completion and the transition from project phase to operations.

The SWPF is the last major piece of the liquid waste system at SRS and will process the majority of the site’s salt waste inventory by separating the highly radioactive waste—mostly cesium, strontium, actinides and waste slurry—from the less radioactive salt solution. After the initial separation process is completed, the concentrated high-activity waste will be sent to the nearby Defense Waste Processing Facility. The decontaminated salt solution will be mixed with cement-like grout at the nearby Saltstone Facility for disposal on-site. Removing salt waste, which fills over 90 percent of tank space in the SRS tank farms, is a major step toward emptying and closing the site’s remaining 43 high-level waste tanks.

“This is a considerable achievement for [the U.S. Office of Environmental Management’s (EM’s)] cleanup program and will drive significant progress in treating the tank waste at SRS in the next decade,” Senior Advisor for EM to the Under Secretary for Science William White says.

“SWPF provides the final piece enabling completion of tank closure activities at SRS,” Manager of DOE’s Savannah River Operations Office Mike Budney says.

The approval comes five months ahead of the current baseline CD-4 completion date of Jan. 31, 2021. Centreville, Virginia-based Parsons Corporation, who designed and built the facility, will operate it for one year.

The SWPF remains on track to start normal operations later this year following completion of hot commissioning. By 2030, it is expected that nearly all of the salt waste inventory at SRS will be processed.