Separation Projects Within the U.S. Department of Energy's Underground Storage Tank—Integrated Demonstration

Abstract

Abstract The greatest technical and financial challenge facing the U.S. Department of Energy is the remediation of the 1 × 10s gal of high-level and low-level radioactive waste in the underground storage tanks (USTs) at its Hanford, Savannah River, Oak Ridge, Idaho, and Fernald sites. With current technologies, this remediation is estimated to cost at least 100 billion dollars. In an effort to reduce costs, improve safety, and minimize delays, the Underground Storage Tank—Integrated Demonstration was created for demonstration, testing, and evaluation of promising new technologies that can be used for UST remediation. These UST—ID demonstrations, which are typically at the pilot-plant scale, are performed by the Characterization and Waste Retrieval Program or by the Waste Processing and Disposal Program (WPDP). The results from these demonstrations will help to determine which processes will be used in the full-scale remediation of the USTs. This paper presents the current technical status of the WPDP proj...