The Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site is in an outage due to an increase in flammable gas levels, but the issue caused no injuries and reportedly will not impact current tank closure work.
The outage began in April, and officials are hoping to have the facility up and running again this fall or winter, but have not yet set a date.
The facility, also known as DWPF, is a key part of the system for processing and immobilizing the high-level waste stored at the SRS tank farms. Workers transfer most of the radioactive waste to the facility where the waste is chemically processed.
Since 1996, the Department of Energy has produced about 4,000 canisters of vitrified waste and expects to produce about 4,600 more canisters over the remaining lifetime of the processing facility.
The facility is not producing canisters due to technical issues and is not expected to pour canisters for the rest of the fiscal year, according to the Department of Energy.
The Energy Department and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent group within the executive branch that provides recommendations on DOE safety issues, reported the processing facility is in an outage due to antifoam issues.
Antifoam has traditionally been added to slow down foaming during the boiling of waste sludge and to prevent carry-over of radionuclides during processing. But in using the antifoam, Savannah River Remediation, the site's liquid waste contractor, learned that as the antifoam chemical degrades, its byproducts can be flammable.
"It was realized that the antifoam can degrade into flammable byproducts even at temperatures well below those in the melter, potentially impacting the flammability of process vessels upstream of the melter," said Dean Campbell, a spokesman for the contractor.
Other problems outlined by the safety board in relation to the processing facility include issues with specific administrative control implementation and safety analysis assumptions.
Issues were communicated to DOE, and Jessie Roberson, the vice chairman of the safety board, requested in a letter to SRS manager Jack Craig that a report be produced within 90 days that discusses solutions on issues surrounding the processing facility.
Campbell added that current work is expected to stay on schedule. Tank 16 is being filled with grout while Tank 12, the next tank in the closure process, is on schedule to meet the May 30, 2016, deadline for operational closure.
"Savannah River Remediation is working expeditiously to resolve these issues and resume safe operations of DWPF. Impacts to the production schedule will be determined when the facility is operational, but no long-term impacts are anticipated," Campbell said.
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard.