A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Saltstone Facility along the Savannah River near Aitken, South Carolina, is making room for 36 million gallons of low-level radioactive salt waste. Ground has been broken on the $8.8 million underground storage facility. The design being used draws upon similar industrial containment approaches, only with a few safety enhancements, including cylindrical tanks (eliminating the wall stresses associated with rectangular storage cells) and a lining system that uses high-density polyethylene (HDPE) geomembranes and geosynthetic clay liners (GCLs).

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