TANKS 18 AND 19-F EQUIPMENT GROUT FILL MATERIAL EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The United States Department of Energy (US DOE) intends to remove Tanks 18-F and 19-F at the Savannah River Site (SRS) from service. The high-level waste (HLW) tanks have been isolated from the F-area Tank Farm (FTF) facilities and will be filled with cementitious grout for the purpose of: (1) physically stabilizing the empty volumes in the tanks, (2) limiting/eliminating vertical pathways from the surface to residual waste on the bottom of the tanks, (3) providing an intruder barrier, and (4) providing an alkaline, chemical reducing environment within the closure boundary to limit solubility of residual radionuclides. Bulk waste and heel waste removal equipment will remain in Tanks 18-F and 19-F when the tanks are closed. This equipment includes: mixer pumps, transfer pumps, transfer jets, equipment support masts, sampling masts and dip tube assemblies. The current Tank 18-F and 19-F closure strategy is to grout the internal void spaces in this equipment to eliminate fast vertical pathways and slow water infiltration to the residual material on the tank floor. This report documents the results of laboratory testing performed to identify a grout formulation for filling the abandoned equipment in Tanks 18-F and 19-F. The objective of this work was tomore » formulate a flowable grout for filling internal voids of equipment that will remain in Tanks 18-F and 19-F during the final closures. This work was requested by V. A. Chander, Tank Farm Closure Engineering, in HLW-TTR-2011-008. The scope for this task is provided in the Task Technical and Quality Assurance Plan (TTQAP), SRNL-RP-2011-00587. The specific objectives of this task were to: (1) Prepare and evaluate the SRR cooling coil grout identified in WSRC-STI-2008-00298 per the TTR for this work. The cooling coil grout is a mixture of BASF MasterFlow{reg_sign} 816 cable grout (67.67 wt. %), Grade 100 ground granulated blast furnace slag (7.52 wt. %) and water (24.81 wt. %); (2) Identify equipment grout placement and performance properties; (3) Design up to 2 additional grout systems for filling the Tank 18-F and Tank 19-F equipment; (4) Prepare samples of candidate grouts and measure fresh properties, thermal properties and cured properties; (5) Recommend a grout for the Tier 1A equipment fill mock up - ADMP 4 foot high mock up, 1 inch and 2 inch pipes; (6) Support procurement of materials for the Tier 1A equipment fill mock up test; (7) Prepare samples of the recommended grout for hydraulic property measurements which can be used for comparison to values used in the F- Tank Farm Performance Assessment (PA); and (8) Document equipment fill grout data and recommendations in a report.« less