The Savannah River Site recently announced that its first mega-volume salt-waste disposal unit has reached the halfway point in construction.
Construction of the unit, or SDU 6, began in October 2013 and reached the milestone this past month. According to a press release, plans indicate that SDU 6 will begin to receive decontaminated salt solution in May 2017, when the current SDUs 3 and 5 reach capacity.
Savannah River Remediation, the site's liquid-waste contractor, operates the salt-processing facilities, disposal units and the other SRS facilities that dispose of radioactive liquid waste. SRR's contract also calls for operationally closing waste tanks and remedying the 30 million gallons of liquid waste stored in the tanks.
The contractor has six smaller salt-disposal units in place, and each one has a 2.9 million gallon capacity. The new mega-unit is more than 10 times the size of the current SDUs. Comparatively, its size would allow a football field to fit inside, according to Savannah River Remediation.
SRS will only need seven of the mega-units rather than 72 smaller SDUs to complete its work. The change will result in a significant life-cycle cost savings of potentially $300 million over the life of the program, given economies of scale, layout, design and construction processes.
Jim Folk, a Department of Energy waste disposition manager, wrote that the SDUs are a substantial part of the process to remove waste from the aging, high-level waste tanks.
"At the end of the waste disposition path, these mega-facilities allow us to give the decontaminated salt solution a safe, final destination," Folk wrote. "Our plans are to continue to leverage this proven technology and build the larger units to stay on top of the waste tank cleanup program."
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the paper since June 2013. He is originally from Vidalia, Ga., and a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.