The United States Department of the Energy (U.S. DOE) Washington River Protection Solutions LLC recently issued an Expressions of Interest (EOI) from contractors capable of providing a supplemental organic treatment system for one the 200 Area effluent treatment facility (ETF) at the Hanford Superfund Site.
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington.
The main treatment train at ETF currently eliminates the hazardous characteristics of the waste and allows for delisting the effluent. Beginning around January 2022, the ETF will receive a new wastewater stream that will be generated nearly continuously for a period of ~40 years and is anticipated to contain at least four organic constituents-acetonitrile, acrylonitrile, acetone, and methylene chloride-in concentrations that exceed the expected performance range for the existing system.
Input is requested from Industry to enable an evaluation of an off-the-shelf procurement and a procurement/design activities solution to meet the future requirement. Expressions of interest are due by 9:00 AM PT on May 6, 2019.
More information is available here: https://www.fbo.gov/spg/DOE/CHG/ORP/EOI-KJF-19-04-01/listing.html
About the Hanford Site
Established in 1943 as part of the U.S. Manhattan Project in Hanford, south-central Washington, the site was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world.
Most of the reactors were shut down between 1964 and 1971. The last reactor at the Hanford site operated until 1987. Since then, most of the Hanford reactors have been entombed (“cocooned”) to allow the radioactive materials to decay, and the surrounding structures have been removed and buried.
In 1989, the State of Washington (Dept. of Ecology), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) entered into the Tri-Party Agreement which sets targets, or milestones, for cleanup. The U.S. EPA and State of Washington Dept. of Ecology share regulatory oversight based on Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, also referred to as Superfund) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of River Protection (ORP) operates the 200 Area ETF. The ETF has been treating wastewaters from processing activities at the Hanford Site since 1994. The main treatment train at ETF includes, in order: pH adjustment; coarse filtration; ultraviolet/hydrogen peroxide oxidation (UV/OX); pH adjustment; excess peroxide decomposition; degasification; fine filtration; reverse osmosis (RO); and, ion exchange (IX).
To date, $15 billion (U.S.) has been spent on clean-up efforts at the Hanford site. In 2014, the estimated cost of the remaining Hanford clean was $113.6 billion (U.S.). Clean-up was estimated to occur until 2046. There are over 10,000 workers on site to consolidate, clean up, and mitigate waste, contaminated buildings, and contaminated soil.
