Efforts are ongoing at Savannah River Site to reduce costs and maximize efficiency in the fight to clean up contaminated groundwater. Less expensive, and more natural measures are being used to clean up contaminated groundwater beneath SRS.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, or SRNS, personnel are using new, innovative methods to harness and enhance natural processes already found at work within the underground water system below this U.S. Department of Energy site. And it is working they claim.
To date, the remedial costs associated with groundwater contaminants near Site F Area have been reduced, reducing cost avoidance by approximately 90%. The price tag has gone from about $1 million a month to $1 million a year. This major cost avoidance has been accomplished by moving from using highly mechanized pump and treat facilities to a simple approach to isolate and clean up hazardous waste.
The process has reduced the migration of tritium, uranium, strontium-90 and iodine-129 from the affected aquifer. One of the biggest innovations involves injecting a non-traditional environmental cleanup material, silver chloride, into the contaminated groundwater to treat radioactive iodine-129. Silver chloride also is used to create photographic paper and as an antidote for mercury poisoning. Finely milled silver chloride particles, reduced to about one-quarter-micron in size, are injected with water into the aquifer, and are extremely effective at capturing the iodine-129, said Gerald Blount, SRNS geologist.
Working with Savannah River National Laboratory scientists, they have found that over a short time period the silver chloride can permanently bind the hazardous iodine-129 as silver iodide, because of its strong natural chemical affinity. Blount noted that the results of a recent test indicate a significant decrease in the hazard posed by iodine-129 in areas where silver chloride was injected into the aquifer beneath F Area.
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