Advanced waste water treatment for radionuclide removal

Advanced Liquid Radwaste Treatment processes can be defined as those technologies which provide substantial solid radwaste reduction and improved water quality when compared to conventional processes such as demineralization and evaporation. Advanced processes have recently been developed and implemented for use in applications where radionuclide removal is the treatment objective. This novel application of Advanced Liquid Radwaste Treatment processes primarily benefits Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) which treat their liquid radwaste for subsequent discharge. Hence the treatment objective is to produce effluent with less than the Lower Limit of Detection (<LLD) concentrations of gamma emitting isotopes in the water discharged to the environment. Advanced processes have successfully processed over 800,000 gallons of outage and non-outage generated floor drain and let down water at two PWRs. Operating results show that advanced systems are capable of processing widely varying waste water streams while lowering product water impurities and solid radwaste generation rates. This paper relates full scale operating experiences encountered since startup, as well as, feed and effluent chemistry results. Specific information is provided on chemical parameters such as conductivity, pH, silica, boron and radioactivity for the system feed and product streams. Advanced systems show continuing promise for aiding nuclear facilities in meeting solid radwaste, ALARA and offsite dose goals. (author)