RICHLAND, Wash. – The 2016 EM Office of River Protection (ORP) Grand Challenge submissions are in, with 34 entries ranging in subject from methods to treat waste in Hanford’s western tank farms to software for waste processing.  

   Ten finalists will be selected from the entries and invited to present at a workshop in September, where one will be selected as the winning proposal.   

   In its fourth year, the Grand Challenge is designed to provide a forum for creative ideas that can make a significant difference in ORP's mission: namely to create efficiencies with potential savings of $250 million or more or greatly improve safety. ORP employees, prime contractors, national laboratories, DOE headquarters personnel, academia and stakeholders can submit entries.  

   Several past proposals have been implemented, including two from 2014 and five from 2015. Five more were endorsed by ORP for outside funding opportunities, and last year’s winning proposal is in study for implementation by ORP and EM.

   This year’s winning proposal, and other high-scoring ones, will also be studied for possible implementation at ORP.  

   Ricky Bang, this year’s Grand Challenge co-lead, said he is excited about the variety and creativity of the 2016 proposals.

   “This year’s proposals include some really great out-of-the-box ideas,” said Bang, an EM facility representative with the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). “The screening team will have a tough time choosing finalists, but all high-scoring proposals will be considered for implementation. We are very excited about this competition and the potential benefit to the mission these ideas will have.” 

   The Grand Challenge has grown in scale and received notice from outside Washington state.  

   “The Grand Challenge competition has captured the attention, and the imagination, of the [EM] complex,” said Elaine Diaz, ORP’s chief engineer and Grand Challenge lead.

   Diaz said the 2015 competition was recognized this year as one of DOE’s best practices for leadership and organizational transformation.  

   “Each year as we hear more great ideas and work throughout the year to implement them, we are encouraging a culture of continuous improvement in safety and mission efficiency,” she said. “We are engaging our internal workforce and the external scientific community in the process of overcoming our biggest challenges.”

   Judges representing the four ORP assistant managers, two ORP prime contractors, DOE headquarters, and several national laboratories will judge the submissions on a variety of factors, including: technical readiness, cost and schedule of implementation, whether they are executable with existing regulatory requirements, and cost and schedule avoidance and savings. 

   “The value of Grand Challenge is it brings together members of the Department, the laboratories, academia, contractors, and last year for the first time, stakeholders,” according to Billie Mauss, a chemist with WTP Engineering Division, who served as the 2015 Grand Challenge co-lead. “It gives interested and involved parties an opportunity to present their good ideas and it gives us access to those suggestions and the ability to potentially improve how we are implementing our mission.”

   The 2015 winning and finalist proposals collectively represented ideas from ORP employees, including one ORP summer intern, five national laboratories, one prime contractor, two outside companies and two universities.

   Last year’s winning proposal presented a “game-changing” idea on the direct-feed vitrification of high-level waste (HLW). The winners proposed that a direct-feed HLW program could take advantage of a potential to increase waste loading of glass in both high-level and low-activity streams; simplify Pretreatment Facility design criteria; and speed tank waste risk reduction by treating sludge earlier. The proposal suggests directly treating solid and sludge tank waste through the High Level Waste Facility.

   “We’ve outlined a concept where we can provide direct feed of high-level solids and sludges through the HLW facility,” explained Albert Kruger, ORP glass scientist, and part of the team that submitted the winning proposal. “We proposed a high-level waste staging facility in the form of a 125,000-gallon tank that would accept tank waste and feed it to HLW in 4,000-gallon batches. Taking advantage of glass work that we’ve done, we can realize far higher levels of aluminum and chromium salts in HLW glass.”

   Kruger said the process will allow nearly a dozen tanks to be emptied of sludge waste within only a few years of starting operations, and that many obstacles related to the Pretreatment Facility and separating waste streams would effectively be eliminated.