Request for an Expression of Interest Treat Hanford Tank Waste to Remove High Dose Radioactive

May 16, 2012

Dear Interested Offerors:

Request for an Expression of Interest – Treat Hanford Tank Waste to Remove High Dose Radioactive Constituents

The requested work is in support of Washington River Protection Solutions, LLC (WRPS) Prime Contract DEAC27-08RV-14800 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of River Protection.

NEED

Washington River Protection Solutions, LLC (WRPS), a contractor to the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of River Protection (ORP), is seeking interested parties for treatment of its liquid tank waste to reduce the concentration of high dose radioactive constituents, primarily cesium-137 (137Cs). There is a select volume of 4-6 million gallons of Hanford tank waste among its 57 million gallons of radioactive waste currently stored in underground storage tanks, that is projected to be treated at-tank for cesium removal to allow further treatment at the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). The reduced cesium stream will be pumped to the WTP for vitrification into a final waste glass form for disposal. WRPS is evaluating commercial interest in providing equipment systems and/or services for set up at its tank farm to treat existing tank volumes. A treated waste stream is needed for transfer to the WTP by December 2017.

BACKGROUND

Hanford has generated a variety of solid and liquid radioactive waste streams over its past 40+ years of operations. Liquid wastes are stored in 1 million gallon underground double-shell storage tanks. This material is staged for eventual treatment into a final waste form at the WTP. A select volume of waste, primarily within AP tank farm, could be treated with commercial ion exchange processes at-tank to match low-activity waste acceptance criteria at WTP. This treatment effort would allow startup and operation of the WTP Low Activity Waste (LAW) facility much earlier than final WTP completion.Current construction progress and planning has established that the LAW sub-facility of the WTP will be available to vitrify low-activity waste by December 2017.

WASTE DETAILS

The AP Tank Farm contains liquid waste generated from fuel processing operations and retrieved from water dissolution of other single shell tanks solids. This liquid is highly caustic containing a large sodium concentration, with a pH in the range of 12-14.Select tanks for LAW vitrification contain minimal to no solids. Attachment A has a list of key constituents within the eight underground AP farm double-shell storage tanks.

PROJECT APPLICATION

Preconceptual design includes the following for consideration:

• The cesium-removal system is mounted on skids or adaptable to modular approach, allowing rate increase with the usage of multiple modules
• Waste will be pumped from the Hanford AP tank to the commercial cesium-removal module and routed back to the same tank or other nearby storage tank for staging prior to pumping to the WTP LAW.
• An alternate approach would be to have a cesium removal system in-linewith flow to the WTP or providing feed on a “just-in-time” basis. The system modules would support both ion exchange and pumping pretreated feed for a vitrification production rate of1-5 canisters of glass/day. This material will be pumped through a hose-in-hose piping assembly approximately 4,500 feet.
• Approximately 7500 gallons of pretreated feed is needed per week to generate 1 canister of glass/day. This is represented by (not a strict mathematical identity) 1,071 gallons of feed/day. Instantaneousflowrates (assuming 60% on-stream time) are as follows:
• 1 Canister/day will require 1,800 gallons/day of pretreated waste or 1.24 gpm
• 5 Canisters/day will require9,000 gallons/day or 6.25 gpm

Project assumptions:

• System is needed for cold simulant testingno later than FY2014 and hot operations in December 2017
• Initial tank for processing will be AP-105
• Resultant LAW vitrified product will be stored on-site at Hanford’s Integrated Disposal Facility
• Overall waste determination will need to be approved through the DOE Waste Determination Process for Waste Incidental to Reprocessing (WIR) protocols
• After project completion contaminated systems that cannot be decontaminated and then free-released shall become the property of the DOE and disposed of through normal DOE procedures.
• Cesium removal will be through ion exchange. The maximum cesium-137 concentration in the final glass product is 0.3 curies/cubic meter. This equates to an approximate value of 9.0E-05 Ci/gal in the final pretreated feed, conservatively assuming all the cesium is retained in the glass, with the same feed rateused per canister above. (See Attachment A for as-is cesium-137 concentrations within the Hanford tanks.)
• Preferred resin shall be non-elutable/non-rechargeable. i.e. once pass-through until spent; system shall have the capability at location to remove resin for eventual dry on-site storage (e.g., in High Integrity Containers), and add new resin
• If resin needs to be recharged system shall have capability for at-location elution and storage.
• Canister generation rate for approximately the first year of operation will be 1/day. Decision to ramp up to higher rates will be based upon operating experience.

Additional Considerations for Offerors:

• Offerors shall be amenable to have their system be modified to meet Department of Energy safety protocols and shielding as required per a DOE Order 1189 evaluation, e.g., there are no licensing issues for adding/modifying the control or alarm systems; system will be classified as a Hazardous Category 2 type facility because of its direct connection to a Hanford waste storage tank
• Offerors personnel involved with on-site setup and/or operation shall be able to obtain necessary security approvals
• Offerors shall have an NQA-1 compliant quality assurance program, or be willing to implement specific NQA-1 quality controls, or support commercial grade dedication.
• It would be advantageous for the non-elutable resin to be of the zeolite family thus allowing for the incorporation of the spentresin into the high-level waste melter stream. Should the solution result in an elutable resin the offeror should be amenable to evaluating spherical resorcinol-formaldehyde resin – the current resin approved for the WTP Pretreatment sub-facility, and thus requiring minimal technology maturation.

REQUEST

Interested firms are invited to submit an expression of interest to include a response to the following provisions:

1. A description of your capability and hardware system (including cesium removal rate), and rough-order-magnitude costs and manufacturing schedule for procurement of a module.
2. Clarifications or exceptions to project criteria, assumptions, or waste streams; specifically if there are other chemical constituent concentrations needed for evaluating Offerors’ system and/or what tanks would work best with your system
3. Related experience (including resin capability with high sodium/pH waste streams), and whether your company has performed similar work, specifically for DOE.
4. Any other information that you believe would be useful in assisting WRPS to plan for the treatment of this waste.

This is not a Request for Proposal, but a request for an expression of interest. Please limit expression of interest responses to less than ten pages of information. All responses must be received by WRPS no later than close of business June 13, 2012 through either of the following methods:

Email:

WRPS looks forward to hearing from you regarding this request. Should you have questions regarding this matter, please contact Tiffany McFarland by email.

Attachment A

Select Maximum Chemical Inventory within the Liquid Fraction
Analyte / Units / AP Farm Tank
AP-101 / AP-102 / AP-103 / AP-104 / AP-1051 / AP-106 / AP-107 / AP-108
Al / kg / 6.22E+04 / 9.69E+04 / 7.53E+04 / 1.17E+04 / 7.43E+04 / 5.80E+04 / 1.87E+04 / 9.87E+04
Cr / kg / 2.59E+03 / 2.50E+03 / 2.75E+03 / 6.41E+02 / 1.53E+03 / 3.00E+03 / 2.43E+03 / 3.34E+03
Fe / kg / 3.17E-01 / 2.00E+01 / 2.05E+01 / 1.18E+02 / 5.43E+01 / 1.96E+01 / 8.35E+00 / 3.25E+01
Hg / kg / 3.14E-02 / 1.27E-5 / 1.38E-1 / 1.61E-01 / 1.95E-02 / 0.00E+00 / 3.34E-02 / 2.71E-03
K / kg / 2.59E+04 / 1.83E+04 / 2.13E+04 / 1.15E+04 / 1.51E+04 / 6.06E+03 / 5.66E+03 / 4.52E+04
Na / kg / 7.56E+05 / 7.40E+05 / 7.65E+05 / 2.81E+05 / 7.23E+05 / 4.47E+05 / 3.41E+05 / 8.62E+05
NO2 / kg / 2.44E+05 / 3.83E+05 / 3.73E+05 / 6.32E+04 / 3.88E+05 / 1.78E+05 / 1.14E+05 / 3.73E+05
NO3 / kg / 9.39E+05 / 6.69E+05 / 6.87E+05 / 4.69E+05 / 6.64E+05 / 3.03E+05 / 4.63E+05 / 6.97E+04
Free OH / kg / 1.11E+05 / 1.37E+05 / 7.09E+04 / 3.65E+04 / 1.17E+05 / 3.17E+04 / 4.37E+04 / 1.64E+05
PO4 / kg / 2.62E+04 / 1.17E+04 / 9.89E+03 / 1.23E+04 / 7.90E+03 / 3.30E+04 / 1.23E+04 / 6.29E+03
SO4 / kg / 2.33E+04 / 1.11E+04 / 2.39E+04 / 1.08E+04 / 1.70E+04 / 1.58E+04 / 3.78E+04 / 1.80E+04
TOC / kg / 1.52E+04 / 9.52E+03 / 2.01E+04 / 1.99E+03 / 1.99E+04 / 1.49E+04 / 4.41E+03 / 1.24E+04
U Total / kg / 2.38E+01 / 5.33E+01 / 1.34E+02 / 1.09E+02 / 2.01E+01 / 2.27E+01 / 2.87E+01 / 1.07E+02
60Co / Ci / 1.34E+01 / 8.84E+00 / 2.29E+01 / 2.81E+00 / 1.65E+01 / 7.61E+00 / 1.31E+01 / 1.02E+01
90Sr / Ci / 2.87E+03 / 1.41E+03 / 8.21E+03 / 7.15E+02 / 1.03E+04 / 4.64E+03 / 6.67E+03 / 2.80E+02
99Tc / Ci / 6.06E+02 / 6.52E+02 / 8.94E+02 / 1.10E+02 / 8.30E+02 / 3.68E+02 / 4.33E+02 / 6.65E+02
129I / Ci / 6.87E-01 / 1.23E+00 / 1.30E+00 / 1.86E-01 / 7.78E-01 / 3.30E-01 / 2.08E-01 / 1.03E+00
137Cs / Ci / 6.30E+05 / 8.79E+05 / 9.03E+05 / 9.67E+04 / 1.26E+06 / 6.88E+05 / 1.33E+06 / 8.12E+05
137Cs Concentration / Ci/gal / 5.86E-01 / 8.36E-01 / 7.56E-01 / 1.35E-01 / 1.22E+00 / 6.07E-01 / 1.22E+00 / 7.18E-01
238Pu / Ci / 2.09E-01 / 3.13E-2 / 7.93E-1 / 6.16E-02 / 1.05E-01 / 8.64E-03 / 1.06E-01 / 1.04E-01
241Am / Ci / 1.53E+00 / 6.93E+00 / 2.88E+01 / 9.36E-01 / 4.80E+00 / 2.59E+00 / 1.20E+00 / 8.12E+00
Liquid Volume / kgal / 1075 / 1051 / 1194 / 716 / 1030 / 1133 / 1092 / 1131

Notes:

GeneralLiquid and solids value based upon latest Waste Tank Summary Report. All other data based upon issued Derivation Basis Inventory documents.

GeneralRadionuclide decay date 1/1/2008

1AP-105 is tank planned for initial feed supply