Westinghouse Electric Company is pleased that the Tank Closure Cesium Removal (TCCR) unit supplied to the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, U.S. for the tank closure demonstration project has proven successful following initial operation.
Westinghouse and its sub-contractor Columbia Energy and Environment Services (CEES) designed, built, tested and delivered the TCCR unit to Savanah River Remediation. The TCCR unit is a module system designed to remove the radioactive element from the stored liquid solutions in underground waste tanks. The unit is used at the tank closure project at SRS, initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management to accelerate the removal of radioactive waste from the underground tanks.
The system allows the remaining low activity liquid to be processed for final disposal. The TCCR is designed with automatic self-cleaning features and replaceable ion exchange vessels that allow the system to process multiple tanks. This allows the site to process the radioactive liquid in the tanks for a fraction of the cost compared to standard fixed treatment system in buildings.
Over the course of a total nine-month operating period, the TCCR unit is expected to process more than 600,000 gallons of dissolved radioactive waste and to remove approximately 80,000 curies of cesium.
