Part 4 of 5 Parts (Please read Part 1, 2 and 3 first)
     The next major test will be what is called a “loss of power” test. This is a critical test needed in order to start the two vitrification melters. Once these melters reach their operating temperature, they can never be shut down. This test will take twenty-eight days. It is intended to determine whether the system has sufficient backup power to weather an emergency situation where normal power has been lost. The test is scheduled for late 2020. It must take place ahead of the 2021 commissioning deadline and the 2022 glass manufacturing. The control room for the Vit Plant is already operating twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The analytical lab staff is able to operate offsite on the same equipment that will be moved onsite next year.
    About eleven million gallons of waste are currently staged to be pumped into the facility. Olds says “To have actual discussions about operations … on site is a great place to be.” The Hanford tank farm is run by AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions. They will stage the waste and deliver it to a separation process tank.
     Rick Holmes is the general manager for the Waste Treatment Completion Company. This is a joint venture between AECOM and Bechtel. Holmes says that the task of sending semi-liquid waste from the tanks across the Hanford site to the Vit Plant poses some serious technical challenges. Once the waste stream arrives at the Vit Plant which is managed by Bechtel, it will be analyzed in the onsite laboratory and then processed into vitrified glass.       
   Holmes says that one concern in the turnover and handover phase is the fact that some of the equipment was installed in 2002 and it must meet current protocol standards. This will require extensive testing and probably some alterations. The final step in the vitrification system will be to transport the vitrified waste to a one million cubic yard on-site disposal facility that cost twenty-five million dollars. It is operated by CH2M Plateau Remediation Ltd., a Hanford contractor.
    The new approach with separation of the waste into two streams required the construction of both a new effluent management facility as well as the low-level waste facility. The effluent management facility will deal with secondary waste liquid that will be generated during treatment of the original waste stream. The low-level treatment facility is a three hundred and thirty feet long, two hundred and forty feet wide and ninety feet high concrete structure. It is designed to mix the waste with silica and other materials needed to make glass before it reached the two three-hundred-ton melters.
     The worlds biggest waste glass melters are twenty feet by thirty feet by sixteen feet tall. They will make vitrified glass in containers that are seven feet long and four feet in diameter. Each container will weigh over seven tons. During operation of the Vit Plat, the melters will produce thirty tons of glass daily. This is ten times the capacity of the melters used at the DoE Savannah River site.
     Holmes says that DoE and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists will custom tailor the mixture recipe for each batch of waste that is processed. He goes on to say, “Nothing I have ever done has prepared me for this. The scale is a pretty significant leap.”
Please read Part 5