‘Heroes’ Honored for Groundbreaking Science in SRS Tank Waste Cleanup

An aerial view of the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site.

AIKEN, S.C. - A team of federal contractor and national laboratory engineers and scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) has been nationally distinguished as "Heroes of Chemistry" for making the world better through their effort, ingenuity, creativity and perseverance.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) recognized a team of seven individuals, representing Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC), Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and DOE, for the integrated effort in developing and deploying a first-of-a-kind separations chemistry that is remediating millions of gallons of radioactive waste through EM's Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS). SRMC is EM's liquid waste contractor at SRS.

The winning team includes SRMC Vice President and Chief Engineer Tom Burns, SRMC Nuclear Safety Officer and Engineering Integration Director Cliff Conner, former SRNL Actinide and Separations Sciences Director Samuel Fink, former SRNL Senior Advisory Scientist David Hobbs, SRMC Technical Advisor Manager Ryan Lentsch, the late ANL Engineer Ralph Leonard, ORNL Corporate Fellow Bruce Moyer, and former DOE-Savannah River Salt Processing Senior Program Manager Patricia Suggs.

The ACS Heroes of Chemistry award recognizes the role of industrial chemical scientists and their companies in developing successful commercialized products embedded with chemistry for the benefit of humankind.

From first-of-its-kind flowsheet development to selection and deployment of a novel chemical process, the winning team members contributed both leadership and technical expertise leading to the long-term success and innovative science behind the SWPF project.

"The successful process reflects what is certainly one of the most successful teaming efforts between national laboratories and industrial contractors, enabling the Department of Energy to complete the safe disposal of wastes that date from the 1950s through the present-day operations. So many researchers and engineers from such a variety of partners contributed to the success," said Fink.

Approximately 33 million gallons of radioactive waste remains at SRS as a by-product of Cold War-era weapons production, space exploration and scientific experimentation. It is stored in two tank farms.

Because of the ingenuity of these award recipients, SWPF is successfully operating as the key facility treating the remaining tank waste at SRS.

SWPF separates and concentrates the highly radioactive portion of the tank waste - mostly cesium, strontium and actinides - from the less radioactive salt solution. After the separation process is completed, the concentrated, high radioactive waste is sent to the nearby Defense Waste Processing Facility to be immobilized in glass and stored in stainless steel canisters onsite until a federal repository is established.

This winning team has few peers in developing novel nuclear chemical processes at a test-tube scale and then implementing those processes successfully at full scale in a nuclear facility, according to Burns.

"It is an incredible honor to be presented the Heroes of Chemistry award from the American Chemical Society," Burns said. "The award winners have given decades of dedication to the discovery, development and deployment of the Salt Waste Processing Facility separations chemistry, a process that is benefitting the health, environment and safety of humanity."

SRNL played a vital role in the development and deployment of the technology from the inception of the combined technologies. In addition to coordinating research with the partner national laboratories and universities, SRNL led development of the technologies for removing strontium and the actinides as well as maturing the engineering scale filtration steps.

Hobbs acknowledged the efforts of his colleagues at SRNL as well as the many collaborators at universities, national laboratories and industrial partners that contributed mightily to the successful development of the strontium and actinide separation process.

The lynchpin to the success was the groundbreaking solvent extract chemistry developed at ORNL.

With support from DOE's Basic Energy Sciences and EM programs, ORNL's Moyer led the chemical development of the cesium extraction process starting from fundamental principles in solvent extraction. In 2008, the matured process began to operate at pilot scale at SRS to remove cesium from millions of gallons of legacy nuclear waste. It won the Secretary of Energy's Award in 2013.

"I'm honored to be among the American Chemical Society awardees who have made a major contribution to mitigating nuclear waste," said Moyer. "The awesome teamwork underlying this success from science to implementation shows DOE at its best."

-Contributors: Colleen Hart, Dawn Levy, Scott Shaw