By restoring and recertifying six long-unused portable tanks, contractors at the Savannah River Site (SRS) are breathing new life into critical equipment—saving time, reducing costs, and ensuring the safe transport of radioactive and hazardous liquids for future missions.
To help maintain a crucial capability for transporting large quantities of radioactive or hazardous liquid solutions while also saving costs, contractors at the Savannah River Site (SRS) recently restored six Industrial Packaging-2 (IP-2) portable tanks and began the recertification process
“These tanks were procured in 2003 to support disposition of Plutonium Uranium Extraction Solvent (PUREX) used at two full-scale hardened radiochemical separations facilities, called F and H Canyons,” said Cody Fee of Environmental Management Operations Programs for Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the managing and operating contractor at SRS.
Fee said deactivating the F Canyon resulted in the creation of excess, radioactively contaminated solutions that needed to be dispositioned.
“The IP-2 tanks were used to transport these solutions off-site for disposal,” he said.
After the deactivation of F Canyon, the tanks were used in other areas of the Site, until finally they were drained and left in the SRS Solid Waste Management Facility (SWMF).
As part of ongoing environmental cleanup and footprint reduction efforts, it was planned for SWMF to dispose of these tanks. However, operations employees recognized that there were potential future uses for them.
“When we began investigating the cost of procuring new tanks to perform needed activities in H Canyon, we discovered that the reuse of the IP-2 tanks was a significant cost and time savings,” said Fee.
Since the tanks had been sitting empty for a number of years, inspections and examinations had to be performed to ensure the tanks had still maintained their structural integrity, according to a press release from SRS.
The results from these examinations were positive, and the tanks are expected to be recertified in Fiscal Year 2025.
“Rather than waiting for new tanks to be custom built and delivered, we had tanks on hand that just needed to be transferred a few miles from SWMF to H Canyon and undergo recertification testing, which is required periodically regardless of the age of the tanks,” Fee said.
Fee also said the transportation capabilities of the recycled tanks will be essential to carrying out both anticipated and planned future missions at SRS.
