Integrated plant for treatment of liquid radwaste

In the early 1980`s, AECL Research, at its Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) site, built a Waste Treatment Centre for managing low-level radioactive aqueous liquid wastes. At present, two industrial liquid waste streams are being routinely treated. One stream originates from the central Decontamination Centre (DC), where reactor components, protective plastic clothing, and respirators are cleaned. The other Active Drain (AD) stream is produced from a large and diverse number of research laboratories and radioisotope production facilities. The two waste streams, totalling about 2500 m per year (0.66 million US gallons), are volume reduced by a combination of continuous crossflow microfiltration (MF), spiral wound reverse osmosis (SWRO), and tubular reverse osmosis (TRO) membrane technologies; two thin-film evaporators (TFE) are employed for (i) the final volume reduction step, and (ii) the subsequent solidification of evaporator bottom with bitumen for containment of the radioactivity.