With the completion of hot commissioning testing, the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Department of Energy's Savannah River site is set to go into full operation and expects to process most of the waste stored there in tanks by 2030. Site manager Michael Budney says the start of operations will enable workers to "close waste tanks at an unprecedented rate."

The Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site will be online by the end of the year, said SRS manager Michael Budney. The facility, which will process millions of gallons of liquid nuclear waste, was completed in 2016 but required the replacement of hundreds of valve controllers before it could enter service.

The first load of liquid salt waste has been processed through the Savannah River Site's Tank Closure Cesium Removal project. The initial batch had 152,000 gallons of salt waste, but between 600,000 and 750,000 gallons are expected to be processed over nine months.

The process of removing radioactive waste from underground tanks has gotten underway at the Savannah River Site. The first step of the Tank Closure Cesium Removal project involves salt dissolution.

The South Carolina Department of Health & Environmental Control will not move back deadlines for the cleanup of liquid waste at the Savannah River Site and will impose fines on the Department of Energy if the deadlines are missed. "We will not compromise the future of our state by moving the goalposts," Catherine Templeton, the state agency's director, wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The cleanup project involves at least eight submerged liquid waste tanks, and a $1.4 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility was initially set to be completed in 2009 but has been delayed several times.