HIGH LEVEL WASTE MANAGEMENT, PROCESSING, AND VITRIFICATION AT THE SAVANNAH RIVER SITE

The High Level Waste System at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, South Carolina, represents about $4 Billion in capital equipment for the safe storage, processing, and vitrification of wastes resulting from the recovery of special nuclear materials. This paper provides an overview of tank storage, the processes and facility status for preparing feed material to the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), and the DWPF process and facility status. When the DWPF mission is complete, about thirty-five million gallons of high level wastes now in storage will have been processed and prepared for disposal. The feed preparation steps will decontaminate the majority of the waste for on-site disposal as \"Saltstone\", and concentrate the radioactivity for feed to DWPF where it will be stabilized in canistered \"logs\" of radioactive glass.