A COMPREHENSIVE TECHNICAL REVIEW OF THE DEMONSTRATION BULK VITRIFICATION SYSTEM Page: 8 of 91
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RPP-31314
1. Introduction
The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of River Protection (ORP) is charged with the
safe management, retrieval, treatment and disposal of over 53 million gallons of
radioactive hazardous chemical wastes currently stored in 177 aging underground single-
shell and double-shell tanks at the Hanford site near Richland, Washington. Currently, a
large Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) is under construction to separate the retrieved tank
waste into high-level waste (HLW) and low-activity waste (LAW) fractions and to vitrify
those separated wastes for either onsite disposal as LAW, or for offsite disposal at the
proposed Yucca Mountain national repository as HLW. Completion of waste retrieval,
treatment and disposal, as well as tank farm closure, will eliminate much of the risk
posed by the tank waste to the Hanford groundwater, the Columbia River, and the public.
With its current design capacity, WTP, once fully operational, is expected to complete
vitrification of the HLW in approximately 20-25 years. However, with WTP's existing
design capacity for the LAW fraction, it is anticipated that a processing period
significantly exceeding 25 years will be required. Additional LAW vitrification
capability could be constructed to produce a balanced system that would result in a
processing duration similar to that for the HLW fraction; acceleration of risk reduction to
the environment and public; and potentially significant savings to the taxpayer.
DOE is considering approaches to provide this additional capability, either by expanding
the existing WTP low-activity waste capability or by developing and deploying
supplemental treatment technologies which might prove to be more cost effective. One
of the candidates for supplemental treatment is an adaptation of In Container Vitrification
TM (ICV") technology available from AMEC Earth and Environmental, Inc. (AMEC).
DOE has contracted with CH2M }IILL Hanford Group, Inc. (CH2M HILL) to design and
construct a full scale demonstration system to test this technology with radioactive tank
waste. This Demonstration Bulk Vitrification System (DBVS) project is currently in
design and development with plans to initiate construction within the next two years.
In order to assure itself and DOE that the DBVS design is robust and likely to be
successful, CH2M HILL proposed to conduct an external review of the current state of
the design and development of the DBVS system prior to the formal decision (CD-3) to
start construction of the project. A group of 16 independent experts and consultants,
representing a broad spectrum of technology experts, academia, and nuclear waste
processing industry experts, was identified and chartered as the Expert Review Panel
(ERP). ORP and DOE's Office of Environmental Management participated in the
selection of the Expert Review Panel members.
The objective of the ERP was to determine whether the DBVS system, as designed, could
be expected to:
* meet the requirements defined in the system specificationi
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Schaus, P. S. A COMPREHENSIVE TECHNICAL REVIEW OF THE DEMONSTRATION BULK VITRIFICATION SYSTEM, report, September 29, 2006; Richland, Washington. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc885749/m1/8/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.