RICHLAND, Wash. – The EM Office of River Protection (ORP) completed construction of a new facility designed to validate the technology and systems of the Low-Activity Waste Pretreatment System (LAWPS) on July 17.

   The Engineered Scale Test Facility will now move into its start-up phase.  

   “This is really setting us up for success at WTP,” ORP Manager Kevin Smith said of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. “There is no doubt this integration piece can make it all work.”  

   The facility, in north Richland, will integrate the filtration and ion exchange systems for LAWPS, and confirm the technologies involved for the LAWPS facility, which is a key part of ORP’s plan to start vitrifying low-activity waste — or turning it into a stable glass form for final disposition — as soon as 2022.

   The LAWPS facility design is approximately 40 percent complete. It will pretreat liquid waste from the Hanford tank farms, removing solid particles and radioactive cesium, before sending the treated waste stream to the Low-Activity Waste facility for vitrification.  

   The removed solids and cesium will be returned to the tanks for future vitrification at the High-Level Waste Facility.  

   Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), ORP’s tank farms contractor, contracted Mid-Columbia Engineering and AVANTech to build the Engineered Scale Test Facility and a full-scale ion exchange facility in Columbia, S.C.  

   Work on the two test facilities began in November 2015.

   “Seven months ago this was a field of tumbleweeds,” explained Terri Marts, senior vice president of research and engineering services for AECOM, during the ribbon cutting for the scale test facility July 20. WRPS is a limited liability corporation owned by AECOM and Atkins.