Process Engineering Intern at SRR
This summer I am working for Savannah River Remediation in Aiken, SC at Savannah River Site. Savannah River Site is 310 square miles big (the city of Columbia is about 135 square miles for reference) and is home to a large population of deer, wild hogs, and many other animals. When the United States government bought the land for the site in 1950, there was a small town in the area called Ellenton. The government actually paid for the entire town to be moved off of the land it was buying and to be relocated nearby as New Ellenton. I’ve been told that they came through and moved entire houses! There is supposedly still places on site that you can drive to and see old neighborhood roads and driveways that are still there, but I haven’t been there myself.
Savannah River Remediation is responsible for cleaning up the liquid waste from Cold War activities
that’s been stored in tanks. Several different processes within SRR make it possible to store the waste long term. The group I am working with is the Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU) and its purpose is to remove radioactive cesium from the salt waste. As a chemical engineering student I am mainly focused on assisting the engineers in my group and learning about the process engineering that goes into keeping a system like MCU running. I find it very interesting because each week there are new challenges that have to be addressed and the company has many milestones that we work to achieve. Working in the nuclear industry has been a very unique yet rewarding experience. The dynamic of the people in my group is fantastic and I have really been enjoying this internship. This summer SRR has 26 interns, but that number varies year to year. The internship lasts 10 weeks and we are given a lot of awesome opportunities during that time to do things like special training and volunteer work. The projects we are given are not just busy work, they are real issues that need to be improved or fixed. Halfway through my summer already and I feel like it has flown by.