Some 60,000 and 46,000 MT of sodium rich nuclear waste are now in storage in the US at Hanford and SRS facilities, respectively. We have developed a technology that uses the high sodium content to advantage: aqueous slurry wastes are first calcined into sodium hydroxide (NaOH) melt slurries, then vaporized and injected into a plasma. The Archimedes Filter separates plasma ions into light and heavy mass groups. For the first time, it is feasible to economically separate large amounts of material in a single-pass plasma device. Such a separation would substantially decontaminate High Level Waste since most radionuclides partition to the heavy fraction. The plasma process is based on setting up fast ExB rotation of a cylindrical plasma. At a certain critical rotational velocity ω E > ω B /2 ions are not confined by axial magnetic field and are lost radially. Because the critical rotational velocity depends on magnetic field the plasma and machine parameters can be set up to separate heavy radionuclides from majority of the light elements in the plasma and, thus, accomplish waste clean up. The paper discusses the Filter process, describes a demonstration device that has been constructed in San Diego, USA, and presents the first experimental results.

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