EM Update | Vol. 10, Issue 19 | May 15, 2018

• EM Sites Mark National Infrastructure Week
• Collaborative SRS Pilot to Increase Spent Nuclear Fuel Processing Rates
• Rep. Dan Newhouse Visits EM’s World-Class Training Facility at Hanford
• Idaho Site Preparing New Demonstration of Waste Treatment Unit
• Hanford Crews Complete First Work Phase for Protective Barrier System

EM Sites Mark National Infrastructure Week

In this issue of EM Update, we're highlighting equipment and facilities that support EM cleanup as part of National Infrastructure Week, May 14-21. Infrastructure is a critical component of EM sites across the country. At the Hanford Site, EM Richland Operations Office contractor Mission Support Alliance (MSA) provides site infrastructure services such as water, sewer, electrical, road and railroad services to enable cleanup work to continue. MSA’s Public Works organization collaborates with other Hanford contractors and internal groups to determine future infrastructure and service needs. The current focus is on maintenance and modernization of the aging infrastructure and right-sizing systems for future cleanup needs. Here an MSA employee removes snow from Hanford roads, which see nearly 8,000 average daily trips.

-Contributor: Renee Brooks

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – At DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM), construction progresses on an important component of infrastructure to enable large-scale cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex. Crews are building two secant pile walls to support the new Mercury Treatment Facility. These walls will retain soils, control water seepage, and provide a deep, secure foundation for the water intake structure to divert Upper East Fork Poplar Creek waters into the headworks portion of the facility. The new facility is vital to OREM because it opens the door for demolition of Alpha-2, Alpha-4, Alpha-5, and Beta 4 — large, deteriorated, former mercury-use facilities dating to the 1940s. After their removal, OREM will remediate the soils beneath them. The facility will limit and control potential mercury releases as crews take down those buildings and address the soils that may disrupt the mercury-contaminated area on the west end of Y-12. When operational, the facility will treat up to 3,000 gallons of water per minute and include a 2-million-gallon storage tank to collect stormwater. The south secant pile wall will consist of 65 piles installed at depths of 20 to 40 feet, and it is scheduled for completion in November 2018. The north wall will consist of 19 piles drilled approximately 16 feet deep, and that work is scheduled for completion in July 2018. An artist rendering shows the completed secant pile walls to support the headworks portion of the Mercury Treatment Facility at Y-12.

-Contributor: Ben Williams

AIKEN, S.C. – H Canyon, the only operating production-scale nuclear chemical separation facility in the U.S., is a critical component of Savannah River Site infrastructure to address EM cleanup by processing legacy spent nuclear fuel from across the DOE complex. The more than 60-year-old facility can support a variety of missions. 

-Contributor: Lindsey MonBarren

LAS VEGAS – The connection between federal agencies and the communities in which they are located is vital in building meaningful community partnerships. That is why the EM Nevada Program funds a grant to support emergency response capabilities in communities near the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). Through this grant program, which is based on $0.50 per cubic foot of classified, low-level and mixed low-level waste disposed at the NNSS, funding has been provided for local infrastructure projects such as the 7,000-square-foot ambulance barn in Beatty and the upgraded communications towers in Lincoln County. In total, more than $15 million has been provided to rural counties near the NNSS to enhance emergency response capabilities. More information on the grant assistance program can be found here. 

-Contributor: Kevin Schmidt 

MOAB, Utah – The pumping system for the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project's settling pond provides an important fresh water supply to the Moab site. Some of its functions include groundwater injection, irrigation, and dust control.

-Contributor: Honora Thompson

WEST VALLEY, N.Y. – The Remote-Handled Waste Facility supports cleanup at the West Valley Demonstration Project. The estimated 11,000-square-foot facility can process low-level and transuranic waste, and is used for container opening, visual inspection, sampling, dewatering, waste segregation and size reduction, non-destructive assay, and packaging.

-Contributor: Joseph Pillittere 

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Collaborative SRS Pilot to Increase Spent Nuclear Fuel Processing Rates

An operator takes a sample of process solution in the sample aisle at H Canyon. Under the initiative to improve spent nuclear fuel processes, online monitors will eliminate the need to pull samples for lab analysis during routine process operations.

AIKEN, S.C. – A new initiative to improve spent nuclear fuel processes at the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) H Canyon could save $2 billion over the life of the chemical separations facility.

   EM and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the site’s management and operations contractor, have teamed with the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to develop a charter for a process of Collaborative Innovation (COIN) to develop technology to improve safety and quality, and increases spent nuclear fuel processing rates by 50 percent.

   One way to do that is through the use of online monitors.

   “These measure the solution real-time instead of an operator having to physically pull a sample and take it to the Analytical Laboratory for testing,” said Ed Sadowski of SRNL. “This will save both time and money.”

   Sadowski noted that the initiative will cost $13 million in initial investment to install the online monitoring capabilities, and could result in approximately $2 billion in savings over the life of the canyon.

   “The COIN team will continue to engage in the implementation of the recommendations to evaluate opportunities for efficiency improvements,” Sadowski said.

   Another COIN improvement to reduce the number of samples submitted to the SRNL Analytical Laboratory during normal process operations is to take advantage of the inherent H Canyon chemical process, physics, and chemistry. Uranium isotopics only need to be measured after mixing solutions of varying isotopics and not in every tank, as they once were, since H Canyon’s chemical processes cannot alter the uranium isotopics. 

   The team also will find alternative methods to the thermal ionization mass spectrometer (TIMS), which provides uranium concentration and isotopic measurements. TIMS is nearing the end of its service life and is expensive to replace. The team identified several alternative methods to provide concentration and isotopic measurements with enough accuracy for H Canyon’s needs.

   COIN team members are scheduled to implement the initiative in three stages by 2021. Its phases include:

• Evaluating the use of online monitors at five locations where existing infrastructure can support them prior to completing the design and installing the monitors. They also will design and fabricate a mock sampler unit. This phase is scheduled for completion by the end of September.
• Installing monitors at eight locations without existing infrastructure support, and qualifying and implementing alternative TIMS methods.
• Designing and installing monitors at eight more locations without existing infrastructure, and designing, installing, and implementing the use of sample pulse height analyzers. These instruments sort electrical pulses generated by photons and route the different energy pulses to the correct scalers where counts are recorded.  

   H Canyon is the nation’s only operating, production-scale, radiologically shielded chemical separations facility. Uranium is recovered from spent nuclear fuel through a complex chemical process, in which fuels are dissolved and run through solvent extraction cycles that remove impurities present in the fuel. During this process, nuclear regulations require samples of the uranium solution be tested periodically to ensure the proper concentration of uranium.

-Contributor: Lindsey MonBarren 

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Rep. Dan Newhouse Visits EM’s World-Class Training Facility at Hanford

RICHLAND, Wash. – U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington recently toured EM’s Volpentest Hazardous Materials Management and Emergency Response Federal Training Center (HAMMER) at the Hanford Site. Newhouse received information about HAMMER’s partnerships, world-class facility, training programs, and how the site’s workforce and employees from other federal agencies use the center as a valuable resource. Following the tour, the congressman provided remarks and fielded questions from HAMMER staff. Here Newhouse is shown on the tour with Steven Maiuri with Richland Operations Office contractor Mission Support Alliance. 

-Contributor: Lori Araujo

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Idaho Site Preparing New Demonstration of Waste Treatment Unit

The new conical shape of the Denitration Mineralization Reformer.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – EM’s Idaho Site is preparing to conduct another Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) demonstration, focusing on fluidization of the facility’s primary reaction vessel after the project team completed improvements this past year. 

   The new test follows a 2017 demonstration that successfully tested the IWTU’s redesigned auger-grinder, which transfers treated waste material to downstream processes.

   In previous demonstrations, instabilities occurred within the Denitration Mineralization Reformer (DMR), including sudden temperature changes and clumping of bed product material due to lack of carbon dioxide in the vessel. Those conditions are caused by weaknesses in the DMR design and the cohesive characteristics of the waste as it converts to a solid carbonate product. The bed material began to stick together like sand castles, greatly hampering fluidization inside the DMR.   

   The team redesigned the DMR’s interior from a half-moon to cone shape and replaced the fluidizing gas rails as a result of extensive studies, computer modeling, and the operation of a pilot plant in Colorado. Superheated steam is delivered through many small nozzles to suspend and fluidize the billions of tiny beads in the vessel. During the steam-reforming process, liquid waste is injected among the superheated beads, which are coated with the waste and converted to a carbonate product like the creation of a pearl.  

   “The pilot plant at Hazen Research underwent these same modifications, so we’ve got a good look at how performance was improved during its operation,” said Joe Giebel, chief engineer for Fluor Idaho, EM’s Idaho Site cleanup contractor. “This demonstration run is all about fluidization.”

   Hazen operated the pilot plant for nearly 100 days in 2017 to assess a wide range of operating conditions and equipment configurations.  

   Other factors critical to optimum fluidization include the rate at which the waste product is introduced into the DMR and the product particle size. The operating team plans to maintain a 1.5-gallon-per-minute waste feed rate during the demonstration and control the product particles to an average size of 300 microns (about the size of coarse coffee grounds) before transferring them out of the DMR.

   The demonstration is scheduled for up to 30 days of waste feed followed by a second run of up to 50 days after performance expectations are met. 

   The team is focused on determining how effectively the changes improve fluidization, according to Craig Olson, Fluor Idaho IWTU manager. Because the IWTU hasn’t operated for nearly a year due to its modifications, Olson said his team will closely monitor how the system responds to the equipment modifications and process control changes.

   Construction of the IWTU was completed in 2012 to treat 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste remaining in the tank farm at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center. Six demonstrations using simulated waste have occurred at the IWTU to test its steam-reforming process. Each run ended prematurely due to equipment problems or process instabilities caused by insufficient fluidization.  

-Contributor: Erik Simpson

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Hanford Crews Complete First Work Phase for Protective Barrier System

Workers recently finished the SX Farm evapotranspiration basin, shown in light brown. It will collect and evaporate water drained from new interim surface barriers to be installed later this spring over Hanford’s SX Tank Farm, shown at the right.

RICHLAND, Wash. – Workers recently finished the first phase of constructing a new protective barrier system for one of Hanford’s underground tank waste storage farms.

   EM’s Office of River Protection (ORP) and contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) finished work on a lined evapotranspiration basin — roughly the size of two-and-a-half football fields — to collect and evaporate water drained from new high-density, modified asphalt surface barriers to be installed later this spring over SX Tank Farm.

   The interim barriers will help prevent rain and snow melt from intruding into the 15 underground tanks or percolating into the soil and driving existing contaminants closer to groundwater. The barriers are temporary structures to remain in place until a final closure decision is made for the tank farm. 

   Crews excavated approximately 28,000 cubic yards of earth for the basin, south of SX Farm. They placed a series of drain pipes on a special liner in the basin floor and covered them with three feet of backfill that was hydroseeded to grow a customized mix of native plants and grasses to help evaporate the water. Hydroseeding is a planting process that uses a slurry of seed and mulch as an alternative to the traditional process of broadcasting or sowing dry seed. WRPS’s Environmental Protection group identified plants with relatively shallow root structures that won’t extend deep enough to damage the liner.  

   Another major element of the project was the placement of nearly 800 linear feet of storm water collection piping.

   Working with engineering drawings from the 1950s and ’60s was a challenge, according to WRPS Construction Manager Jeremey White.

   “We found things were close, but not quite where they were supposed to be,” he said.

   The team used ground-penetrating radar to help locate buried utility lines of all types — electrical, raw water, instrument/dry air, and drain lines. Once lines were found, the team determined the best route for weaving the large 18-inch drainage pipe through the maze of abandoned-in-place and in-service lines. 

   Advanced planning helped workers to avoid cutting in-service lines, but extensive cutting and capping of abandoned lines was required, with all the necessary safety precautions.

   “We were prepared to deal with high contamination, asbestos, and airborne radioactivity,” White said.

   Workers installed three catch basins, three stormwater vaults, and a wastewater separator. The vaults, designed to handle output from a 100-year flood, weighed nearly six tons each.

   “This has been a huge undertaking, and the team has done a great job in overcoming many obstacles as we continue to make progress on this project,” ORP Tank Closure Manager Jan Bovier said.  

-Contributor: Jerry Holloway

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