The River Protection Project is to design and build a high level nuclear waste treatment facility. The waste treatment plant is to process millions of gallons of radioactive waste stored in tanks at the Hanford Site. The high level nuclear waste treatment process includes various unit operations, such as ultrafiltration, precipitation, evaporation, ion exchange, and vitrification. Ion exchange is identified as the optimal treatment method for removal of cesium-137 and Tc-99 from the waste. Extensive ion exchange testing was performed using small-scale columns with actual waste samples. The objectives of this study were to: demonstrate SuperLig 644 ion exchange performance and process steps for the removal of cesium from actual AN-104 tank waste; pretreat actual AN-104 tank waste to reduce the concentration of cesium-137 in the waste below LAW vitrification limit; produce and characterize cesium eluate solutions for use in eluate evaporation tests. The experiments consisted of batch contact and small-scale column tests. The batch contact tests measured sorption partition coefficients Kds. The Kds were used to predict the effective resin capacity. The small-scale column tests, which closely mimic plant conditions, generated loading and elution profile data used to determine whether removal targets and design requirements were met.
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