Radwaste Solutions is a specialty magazine dedicated to the decommissioning, environmental remediation, and waste management segments of the nuclear community.
The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina will begin a leak tightness test on what it called “the fourth megavolume saltstone disposal unit (SDU)” at the site.
Robotics experts from Sandia National Laboratories and representatives from the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management’s Technology Development Office recently visited the Sellafield nuclear site in England to discuss how robotics, artificial intelligence, and other emerging tools can be developed and used in nuclear cleanup operations.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said that crews have completed major deactivation efforts at the Alpha-2 building at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The former uranium enrichment facility is scheduled for demolition next year.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is launching a new Coordinated Research Project (CRP) to increase international knowledge and drive progress toward testing deep borehole disposal for intermediate- and high-level radioactive waste.
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To expand interim storage of vitrified high-level radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management and its liquid waste contractor Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC) have double stacked 2,000 canisters in one of the site's two glass waste storage buildings (GWSB). GWSB 1 consists of a below-grade, seismically qualified concrete storage location containing support frames for the vertical storage of 2,262 10-foot-tall canisters.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that the first batches of glass-forming beads, called frit, were poured last week into a melter at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), also known as the Vit Plant. The melter, which has been heated to 2,100ºF, will be used to immobilize Hanford’s radioactive and chemical tank waste, turning it into a stable glass form through vitrification.
Technical specialist Peter King (left) and Sam Jay, UAV engineer and chief pilot, at Sellafield’s Engineering Centre of Excellence, with the Flyability Elios 3 drone. (Photo: Sellafield)
Sellafield Ltd., a subsidiary of the U.K. government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, announced that drone pilots have successfully completed two firsts in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, England.
According to the company, the flights, which accessed a Sellafield building with limited space using a light detection and ranging (lidar) sensor and a radiation dosimeter, are helping improve the safety of employees during the decommissioning of the site’s legacy buildings.
Mapping flight: First, an Elios 3 drone equipped with a lidar sensor was able to successfully collect data from a site building. The data will be processed to produce a 3D model of the area, which will help inform engineering decisions. According to Sellafield, the mapping flight marks a major milestone for the site’s UAV team, enabling unparalleled efficiency in mapping and 3D modeling.
More than 100 people from Savannah River National Laboratory and the Hanford Site participated recently in a workshop to share analytical knowledge focused on the cleanup of radioactive tank waste at Department of Energy sites.
The Department of Energy announced last week that Melter 1 at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant, has hit its operational temperature of 2,100ºF. The DOE began heating Melter 1 in October 2022, but was soon forced to pause when abnormalities in the heaters’ power supply were encountered.
Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state recently removed a complex piece of equipment that had been standing in the way of future tank waste retrieval.
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which evaluates the Department of Energy’s activities on radioactive waste management, is holding a hybrid (in person and virtual) public meeting on August 30 to discuss the DOE’s consent-based process for siting one or more federal interim storage facilities for commercial spent nuclear fuel. The DOE’s research and development related to high-burnup SNF and advanced reactor waste disposal will also be discussed.
The Idaho National Laboratory is moving closer toward closing its largest building—which, at more than 316,000 square feet, could comfortably house a modern U.S. aircraft carrier, according to the Department of Energy.
The Department of Energy is planning to ship contaminated process equipment from its Savannah River Site in South Carolina to Waste Control Specialists’ federal low-level radioactive waste facility in Andrews County, Texas.
A three-day Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program (MSIPP) event, led by Savannah River National Laboratory researcher Simona Hunyadi Murph, was held recently at the South Carolina site, according to a release by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM). The event included a collaborative workshop, job shadowing, and a tour of the laboratory and Savannah River Site field activities.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management awarded a 10-year contract worth up to $5.87 billion to Southern Ohio Cleanup Company (SOCCo) of Aiken, S.C., for the decontamination and decommissioning of the DOE’s Portsmouth site in southern Ohio. SOCCo is a newly formed limited liability company comprising Amentum Environment and Energy, Fluor Federal Services, and Cavendish Nuclear (USA) Inc.
A truck hauls excavated salt away from the WIPP utility shaft project, marked by a large aboveground steel headframe. The shaft has reached the depth necessary to allow horizontal tunneling work to begin, which will connect the shaft to the WIPP underground repository complex. (Photo: DOE)
The Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office announced that it has made a significant step toward increasing airflow to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) underground with the excavation of a new utility shaft. According to the office, crews working on the shaft recently reached an underground depth, known as station depth, that will allow horizontal tunneling work to begin on connecting the shaft to the WIPP repository complex.
Located in southeastern New Mexico, the repository for defense-related transuranic waste sits 2,150 feet below ground level. Airflow to the underground has been restricted following a radiological release in 2014.
When completed, the 26-foot-diameter utility shaft will provide air to WIPP’s new ventilation system, called the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS). The increased airflow provided by the system will allow for simultaneous mining, rock bolting, waste emplacement, and maintenance operations.
Tohoku University and the University of Michigan are jointly sponsoring a series of workshops focused on sharing experiences between Japan and the United States on the decontamination and decommissioning of commercial nuclear power plants.
A full agenda for the workshop can be found here.
The deadline for registration is August 1. A registration form, along with further information, can be found here.
The Department of Energy has awarded an estimated $2.6 million to the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices to work collaboratively with governors to solve the continued challenges posed by waste management and cleanup at DOE sites, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management announced on July 5.
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We’ve all seen the headlines such as “Should Japan Dump Fukushima's Radioactive Water into the Ocean?” along with “Japan Set to Pour Fukushima Waste into Pacific, Irking China” and “Japan Is Slowly but Surely Releasing Wastewater from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant into the Pacific Ocean.” The most recent spate of fearmongering was triggered by the IAEA’s July 4 announcement that the agency had finished its independent assessment of Japan’s plans to release the treated wastewater stored at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station and found the plan “consistent with IAEA Safety Standards.”
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management recently shipped for off-site disposal 14 sodium fluoride traps, or exchange vessels, from the C-310 Product Withdrawal facility at the DOE’s Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site in Kentucky. DOE-EM said it has also eliminated the site’s entire inventory of chlorine gas cylinders.