In 1989, the Savannah River Plant was renamed the Savannah River Site. It was originally established in 1950 near Aiken, S.C., to produce nuclear materials for the nation, primarily for defense purposes. The site consisted of a heavy water production plant, three fuel fabrication facilities, five production reactors, two nuclear separation facilities, waste management facilities, tritium processing facilities, and the Savannah River National Laboratory. The main isotopes produced were, by priority, tritium, plutonium-238, and plutonium-239.

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina has processed more than 10 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste in its Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has announced.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is responsible for roughly 90 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste at Idaho National Laboratory, the Hanford Site in Washington state, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. About 900,000 gallons of waste are stored at INL, 56 million gallons at Hanford, and roughly 36 million at SRS. A further 400,000 gallons of waste from various operations are being stored at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.

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.

Claflin University students recently toured the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina to learn about the facilities and occupations there.

Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC), the radioactive liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, is optimizing some equipment maintenance at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). The facility traditionally uses centrifugal contactors in the solvent extraction process, and its laboratory uses manipulators to handle process samples and equipment within its radioactive cell. The equipment requires periodic maintenance and rebuilding.

The Department of Energy approved the start of operations at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS), authorizing hot (radioactive) operations to begin at the facility, the agency announced on August 17.

The approval comes five months ahead of the current baseline completion date of January 31, 2021. Parsons Corporation, which designed and built the first-of-a-kind facility, will operate it for one year.

“This is a considerable achievement for EM's (Environmental Management) cleanup program and will drive significant progress in treating the tank waste at SRS in the next decade,” said William “Ike” White, senior advisor for the EM to the Under Secretary for Science.