The US Department of Energy on 5 October transferred the first batch of radioactive waste to the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS), officially starting the “hot” commissioning of the facility. Startup of the SWPF is the last major piece of the liquid waste system at SRS and represents significant progress in DOE’s ability to tackle one of the largest and most challenging environmental hazards at the site – tank waste. Parsons Corporation, which designed and built the first-of-a-kind facility, will operate it for one year. Savannah River Remediation, the SRS liquid waste contractor, transferred the waste from H Tank Farm following extensive infrastructure modifications to establish a safe and secure flowpath to the new facility. The first batch of 4,000 gallons of waste will take about 10 days to process as the facility methodically goes through a series of surveillances and sampling to ensure all aspects of the process work as designed. Now that SWPF is operational, it is expected that nearly all of the salt waste inventory at SRS will be processed by 2030.
