Site: Savannah River Site

Summary: Two Savannah River Site project design teams, Tritium Extraction Facility (TEF) and Tritium Facility Modernization and Consolidation (T-CON), achieved their goals of minimizing waste generation, improving worker protection, promoting resource conservation, and serving as role models for SRS on integrating pollution prevention (P2) and sustainable design principles. Both projects completed pollution prevention design assessments and identified P2 opportunities estimated at over $21 million cumulative cost savings. Their success is attributed to a strong commitment to the methodology by the design teams. Management and peer recognition of their success has helped the P2 Design Coordinator expand use of design assessment tools at the SRS.

Total Project Cost: TBD

Project Description: The Savannah River Site (SRS) placed a priority on integrating Pollution Prevention in Design (P2D) into the facility design framework and has provided site-level guidance to integrate P2D tools and practices into the SRS facility design implementation process. The most significant step taken was writing requirements for P2D into site-level performance agreements and funding it as an operational line item. The SRS site objectives were to advance DOE's vision of becoming a showcase for pollution free and energy efficient operations, to support the complex-wide P2D deployment strategy, and to make P2D a fundamental principle of sound life cycle asset management. SRS revised all appropriate site-level project management and design engineering procedures to specify identification and implementation of P2 opportunities. Management and employee training preceded implementation. SRS accomplishments included:

• Development and presentation of a P2D training module to over 190 project managers and engineers
• Establishment of a full-time pollution prevention coordinator position with the Design Engineering Division to lead the P2D and Affirmative Procurement in project efforts
• Identification of various tools and resources necessary to support and assist projects in the site-wide implementation of P2D
• Development, distribution and implementation of a site-wide P2D training program based on the DOE complex P2D training program
• Increased P2D visibility and awareness by presentation of technical paper, articles, and awareness displays both on and off site.

This nomination recognizes the effort of two project design teams to apply the design assessment methodologies resulting in estimated savings of $21 million. Projects are:

• A Tritium Extraction Facility [TEF] will be constructed to process irradiated tritium-producing burnable absorber rods [TPBARs] from a Commercial Light Water Reactor [CLWR].
• The Tritium Facility Modernization and Consolidation [T-CON] Project will upgrade and consolidate tritium gas processing systems to perform various product separation functions. Five new process systems will be constructed under this scope.

The two projects, Tritium Extraction Facility (TEF) and Tritium Facility Modernization and Consolidation (T-CON) achieved their goals of minimizing waste generation, improving safety and worker protection, promoting resource conservation, and serving as a role model for SRS on the integration of pollution prevention and sustainable design principles. The commitment of the Project team, DOE, regulatory and operations personnel is evident in the deliverables and control documents incorporating P2 concepts produced by the two design teams. Both projects completed pollution prevention design assessments and identified pollution prevention opportunities estimated at over $21 million cost savings. This success can be attributed to a strong commitment to the methodology by the DOE-SR and design teams. These successes overcome traditional barriers where facility design teams viewed the P2D process as an unfunded add-on to project design scope. Recognition of these project successes enables the P2D coordinator to be actively engaged in tracking and providing assistance to expand the use of available tools and resources. At Savannah River, P2D has been elevated from an inconsistent random application of DOE P2D tools to a fundamental part of the design process.

This Pollution Prevention Design Assessment identified over fifty (50) pollution prevention design opportunities for the TEF and T-CON Facilities. A few examples are:

• Selecting a permeable barrier for process column to minimize system contamination
• Use of mercury free equipment
• Use flexible insulation in process cooling subsystem to prevent condensation of contamination water vapor in order to minimize contaminated job control waste
• Prevent contaminating groundwater by using above ground tank for Diesel Generator
• Identified and evaluated Vertrel™ solvent and avoided use of Freon for cleanliness testing
• Use washable or strippable finishes in buildings process area
• Change size, diameter, of process equipment for better efficiency
• Cleaned in-place, multi-use filters

The design approaches will unquestionably reduce or prevent the generation of wastes eliminating substantial disposal costs and adverse impacts to the environment. However, it is difficult to quantify the actual waste disposal cost avoidance until the operational phase of the project starts. The team's initial calculations estimate the savings/cost avoidance at approximately $21 million (about $13.5 million from TEF and $7.5 million from T-CON). The final savings from both Tritium projects' pollution prevention efforts are expected to be ultimately greater than $21 million but regardless of how the actual operational numbers turn out the economic, environmental, safety, and public relations benefit of these two teams P2 initiative is worthy of national recognition.

Contact Information:

William Boettinger