Savannah River Site workers are building a storage space the size of a four-story building to contain the last of the site's Cold War-era nuclear waste.
Being built with concrete and steel, Saltstone Disposal Unit 12 is expected to be the last large storage container for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to safely dispose of the waste, according to Savannah River Mission Completion.
"Legacy waste cleanup is a priority for EM, and the SDUs play a key role in the SRS cleanup mission, especially now that the Salt Waste Processing Facility is treating waste at record levels," said Chuck Comeau, the DOE Savannah River Operations Office's federal project
director. "SWPF has greatly accelerated processing the waste, which means the SDUs must be ready to store the final product."
Salt waste processing scrubs the most radioactive parts of the liquid waste, which is then mixed with inert materials to form a grout. The grout is poured into an SDU, making it easier to store when it hardens.
SRS has stored nuclear waste on-site since the 1950s, when the site's chief mission was to produce nuclear materials for U.S. defense programs, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Savannah River Site builds final nuclear waste vault for cleanup
