Nuclear waste disposal vault leaks at DOE South Carolina site

Nuclear waste disposal vault leaks at DOE South Carolina site

Washington (Platts)--5Oct2006

A concrete disposal vault at the US Department of Energy's Savannah River
Site in South Carolina is leaking radioactive waste, a state official said
Thursday.

Shelly Sherritt, the federal facilities liaison at the South Carolina
Department of Health and Environmental Control, said radioactive material had
leached from cracks in the walls of the site's so-called Saltstone Disposal
Facility.

"There has been some seepage in the cracks of the concrete walls in the
past," Sherritt said. She said the liquid that seeped out of the cracks was
radioactive, but that it was "not a large amount or anything that would cause
a groundwater problem."

Still, Sherritt said the state agency was taking the matter "very
seriously," and that it would send staff to investigate. She said the state
agency did not learn of the leak on its own, but that it was informed of the
situation by DOE.

"We have received letters from DOE saying there were cracks in the
walls," Sherritt said.

SRS's saltstone vault is used to dispose of the "low activity" portion of
the high-level radioactive waste at the nuclear weapons site. The state agency
only issued DOE a draft permit to dispose of millions of gallons of additional
waste in similar vaults at the site two days ago.

Sherritt said leakage would not be a problem with the forthcoming vaults
because the new permit requires DOE to install a sophisticated drainage system
to capture any liquid that seeps out of the waste, which will be immobilized
in blocks of concrete grout.

DOE will also be required to beef up the cover structures of the vaults
in order to keep rain out, Sherritt said.

A DOE spokeswoman downplayed the revelation, saying DOE informed South
Carolina as early as the 1980s that the SRS vault had developed cracks. DOE
immediately patched the cracks, and they "never posed any health risks to the
workers or the public," she said.

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