The Savannah River Site's facility for encasing liquid defense waste in glass received its fourth melter earlier this month.
In a release Tuesday, the Department of Energy site announced the fourth melter for the Defense Waste Processing Facility arrived March 6 for final assembly. The 65-ton piece of equipment can melt glass and mix it with tank waste to create a stable material that's poured into stainless steel canisters for eventual disposal.
The South Carolina complex keeps multiple melters on site in case the one in use needs to be replaced. At present, the DWPF is on its second melter since operations began in 1996. The current melter recently turned 10 years old and will be replaced in 2014 or 2015, according to SRS. About six to 10 years after that, the recently delivered melter will be placed into service to finish the task of treating radioactive sludges and salts created during Cold War weapons production. About 37 million gallons of waste is currently stored in tanks at SRS.