Design and Development of Innovative High-Level Waste Pipeline Unplugging Technologies (Peristaltic Crawler)

The U.S. DOE Hanford site has the largest number of High-Level Waste (HLW) storage tanks and the largest volume of HLW
in the United States. The safe storage, retrieval, treatment, and disposal of approximately 53 million gallons of highly toxic,
high-level radioactive waste stored in Hanford’s 177 underground tanks are a national priority. Pipeline plugging has been
cited as one of the major issues at can result in unplanned outages at the Hanford Waste Treatment & Immobilization Plant
(WTP). The availability of a pipeline unplugging tool/ technology is crucial to ensuring efficient, continued operation of waste
transfers at Hanford and helping them meet scheduled retrieval milestones. FIU has been tasked with developing new pipeline
unplugging technologies that have the potential to efficiently remediate cross-line and transfer lines plugging incidents. One of
these novel technologies is a peristaltic crawler.