DOE Starts Up Savannal Waste Plants; Picks CH2M Hill For Hanford Cleanup

摘要

The Energy Department, moving on two of its toughest nuclear cleanup challenges, Thursday announced the long-sought startup of high-level radioactive salt waste processing facilities at its Savannah River Site and the hiring of a contractor team led by CH2M Hill to raze a plutonium facility and begin tackling other heavily contaminated Cold War-era facilities at its Hanford site.rnThe launch of the so-called Interim Salt Disposition Processing System at Savannah River is a hard-won milestone for DOE's oft-criticized cleanup program, which has struggled for 25 years to develop waste processing facilities to start disposing of some 32 million gallons of salt waste stored in underground tanks at the South Carolina nuclear weapons site.rnAn initial processing facility, known as the In-Tank Precipitation project, was started in 1983, but eventually abandoned by DOE due to unforeseen safety problems that arose after some $500 million was spent on the effort.