Savannah River

Liquid Waste Operations

Orano Federal Services is involved in all aspects of the SRS liquid waste operations scope, including our principal assignment managing the Defense Waste Processing Facility. We also provide budgeting, plant operations, quality assurance, engineering, tank closure, and are a member of the SRR Board of Managers. We have assigned several of our most accomplished senior managers to support the SRS program, including as Director of DWPF and Saltstone Operations and DWPF Facility Operations Manager. The DWPF requires regular maintenance to continually operate the facility. Orano Federal Services experts have led a production enhancement team in identifying more than 25 process improvements, developing action plans, and tracking those actions to closure.

We have:

• Helped to extend the long-term operation of key tank farms’ equipment by 10 years
• Led the implementation of changes to the chemical processes, mechanical systems, and DWPF operational procedures that resulted in a 68% increase in production of HLW canisters after the contract began
• Deployed multiple remote investigation robots and tooling
• Saved $100M with an innovative canister stacking solution

Leveraging International Expertise

As part of our corporate commitment to contract success, we have brought in experts from other company programs/sites in the U.S. and France to provide additional owner/operator perspective and lessons learned. For example, we performed a study of DWPF operations and spare parts inventory to identify opportunities to minimize the impacts of outages, which resulted in better recovery from forced outages and higher net throughput through the facility.

Orano Federal Services also conducted a first-of-a-kind repair of the 3H evaporator in 2017 that saved $10M and one year of operating time. In 2017, we participated in the first melter change-out project since 2003 and provided leadership and advisory services for the operations and integration of large equipment replacement outage evolutions, saving 9 months and $150M annually.

25H Evaporator Repair

Orano Federal Services led the investigation into the causes of the 25H Evaporator leak and developed potential repair options to avoid the costs and lengthy outage to replace the pot with a new component. Orano Federal Services and its subcontractors applied robotics and commercial nuclear expertise to perform the inspection. Once the leak was identified the team developed a remote powder injection laser welding process that was used to successfully repair the HLW evaporator. This welding process was deployed remotely, had less moving components, and was less aggressive than traditional conventional welding techniques. Upon repair completion, the evaporator was returned to service.

BROKK and KUKA robots in Orano Lynchburg Test Facility.

Evaporator repair