AIKEN - The Department of Energy is walking a tight rope as it tries to close a high-level waste tank at Savannah River Site for the first time since 1997.
The DOE gave plans to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February that spell out how most of its 37 million gallons of waste would be processed and stored.
But it could take the commission two months or more to approve the plans, and DOE officials already concede that the agency will miss its October 2006 deadline to empty one of its 49 waste tanks by about three months, officials said Monday at an SRS Citizens Advisory Board meeting in Aiken.
The deadline was at one point set for early 2005 but has been pushed back, in part because of a federal lawsuit that challenged how the DOE plans to store waste.
Last year's National Defense Authorization Act cleared the way for the DOE to classify and determine how it will store radioactive byproducts from the Cold War, but for the first time the commission must review and approve the DOE's plans.
"We are both learning," said Terry Spears, director of DOE's salt processing division.
The two agencies are set to discuss waste storage plans today, and at least one commission official said they appear good to go.
"At this point, we haven't seen any particular show stoppers," said Scott Flanders, deputy director of the commission's division of waste management and environmental protection.
Mr. Spears said the current review shouldn't slow the DOE's long-term goal to have the tanks emptied by 2019. But even the slightest hiccup as officials try to rid SRS of nuclear waste can send ripples of concern through the community.
The site's tanks are aging - 24 of the original 51 tanks were built before 1960 and at least 13 leaks have been reported. As Michelle Sherritt put it, high-level waste at SRS is the "single largest environmental risk" to South Carolina.
Ms. Sherritt, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control's federal facilities liaison, said the DOE has yet to apply for an extension on their deadline but her agency was most concerned about "maintaining momentum toward closure."
"DHEC is watching it very closely," she said.
There are basically three forms of waste in the tanks, all of which resulted from weapons production from about 1950 to 1990: a peanut-butterlike sludge at the bottom of the tanks; solidified salt formations; and a dense liquid salt solution.
DOE officials say 10 percent of all the waste is considered high level. All of the sludge at the tanks' bottoms is considered lethal, and officials have been able to extract it from the tanks and vitrify it into glass since 1996.
But after closing just two of the waste tanks in 1997, the site stopped processing salt waste in 1998 because extraction equipment at the time proved too dangerous. The facility that will eventually extract salt waste won't be complete until after 2008, which forces the DOE to take interim steps to flush waste out of some tanks until the extraction factory is finished.
Once complete, the Salt Waste Processing Facility will divide high- and low-level wastes. The more potent of the two will be turned into glass, put into steel canisters and supposedly shipped to an out-of-state repository for permanent storage, presumably Yucca Mountain in Nevada, though safety concerns have delayed its 2012 opening.
The low-level waste will buried under ground in concrete bunkers, and less than 1 percent of all the waste will be left at the bottom of the storage tanks, where it will be covered in grout and buried.
Ridding Aiken County and the state of dangerous nuclear waste has become a hot-button issue for the county council, which has invited U.S. Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham and U.S. Reps. Gresham Barrett and Joe Wilson to discuss the issue.
Councilman Chuck Smith said he was disappointed that the DOE is behind schedule.
"It's an indicator to me that there is complacency somewhere in the system, that we don't have the full support of the U.S. government to deal with this issue," he said.
Reach Josh Gelinas at (803) 648-1395, ext. 110, or josh.gelinas@augustachronicle.com
What's Next:
The first closure of a high-level waste tank at Savannah River Site since 1997 has been delayed until about January 2006, three months after its scheduled deadline.