Clean salt process final report

A process has been demonstrated in the laboratory for separating clean, virtually non-radioactive sodium nitrate from Hanford tank waste using fractional crystallization. The name of the process is the Clean Salt Process. Flowsheet modeling has shown that the process is capable of reducing the volume of vitrified low activity waste (LAW) by 80 to 90 %. Construction of the Clean Salt processing plant would cost less than $1 10 million, and would eliminate the need for building a $2.2 billion large scale vitrification plant planned for Privatization Phase 11. Disposal costs for the vitrified LAW would also be reduced by an estimated $240 million. This report provides a summary of five years of laboratory and engineering development activities, beginning in fiscal year 1992. Topics covered include laboratory testing of a variety of processing options; proof-of-principle demonstrations with actual waste samples from Hanford tanks 241-U-110 (U-110), 241-SY-101 (101-SY), and 241-AN-102 (102-AN); descriptions of the primary solubility phase diagrams that govem the process; a review of environmental regulations governing disposition of the reclaimed salt and an assessment of the potential beneficial uses of the reclaimed salt; preliminary plant design and construction cost estimates. A detailed description is given for the large scale laboratory demonstration of the process using waste from tank 241-AW-101 (101-AW), a candidate waste for 0044vitrification during Phase I Privatization