Savannah River’s Salt Waste Processing Facility begins full operations

Tank waste: Processing of the radioactive waste began in early October, and by mid-November the SWPF had begun processing undiluted feed from Tank 49 in Savannah River’s H Tank Farm. According to the DOE, all hot commissioning testing objectives were met on schedule and without incident. In total, more than 450,000 gallons of decontaminated salt solution have been transferred from the SWPF.

The startup of the SWPF is the last major piece of the liquid waste system at SRS and, according to the DOE, represents a significant leap forward in the department’s ability to tackle the largest and one of its most challenging environmental risks—legacy radioactive tank waste. With the SWPF fully operational, it is expected that nearly all of the salt waste inventory at SRS will be processed by 2030.

The process: The remediation of radioactive waste begins with the transfer of the waste from the H Tank Farm to the SWPF, where it undergoes a two-step separation process. The first step removes strontium and actinides, such as uranium and plutonium, from the waste. The second step, known as caustic-side solvent extraction, removes radioactive cesium.

After the separation processes are completed, the concentrated high-activity waste is sent to the nearby Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) for immobilization through vitrification. The decontaminated salt solution is mixed with cement-like grout at the nearby Saltstone Production Facility (SPF) for disposal on-site.

Transfers of these waste streams out of the SWPF were also completed during hot commissioning. The decontaminated salt solution from the SWPF has been sent to the SPF. The actinide-laden sludge solids and the cesium-laden strip effluent radioactive waste streams, removed from the salt waste by the SWPF, have been sent to the DWPF, where the concentrated waste will be vitrified and stored in stainless steel canisters on-site until a federal repository is available.