A local community advisory board wants the U.S. Department of Energy to complete a plutonium downblending mission at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina a decade earlier than the current projection for fiscal 2046.
In a 19-0-1 vote Tuesday, the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) agreed to ask the Energy Department to apply more funding and technology for the downblending of 6 metric tons of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium by the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management office. The recommendation, which will be sent to DOE headquarters for review, did not cite a dollar amount.
The board’s recommendation states that DOE has determined the downblending mission can be completed before 2046 if additional funding is allocated to pay for more shifts and to acquire the glove boxes used to carry out the work. The document is not clear whether DOE itself said these potential actions would speed the work up by 10 years.
Regardless, the board wrote that the mission needs to be maximized and finished as soon as possible, to avoid environmental risks associated with storing the plutonium at Savannah River. “Furthermore, slower dispositioning could increase costs for surveillance and maintenance related to validating storage life,” the board added.
It is unclear who abstained from the recommendation, as CAB votes are conducted anonymously via an electronic casting system. But prior to passage, board members on Monday discussed whether they had enough information about the mission to pass the recommendation.
For example, CAB member Malcolm Phillips, who has a master’s degree in nuclear energy, asked if changing the schedule at SRS would also alter receipt of the material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The facility will accept the downblended plutonium following the full conclusion of processing.
“Is there a transportation risk to WIPP?” Phillips asked. “There’s a lot of moving parts in this that go beyond simply accelerating the downblending by 10 years. It just really needs to be looked at.”
Other CAB members said the Energy Department can educate the board in its response to the recommendation on what can and can’t be done to meet an earlier goal. “We’re flip-flopping whether we’re experts or not,” said board member Dan Kaminiski. “This is a public opinion.”
The mission involves diluting 6 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium currently stored at Savannah River. None of the material is part of the 34 metric tons of plutonium that was intended to be converted into nuclear reactor fuel through the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, which DOE officially terminated in October.
Downblending is conducted at the site’s K Area, by mixing the plutonium with inhibitor materials so that it can no longer be used to power nuclear weapons. The resulting solution will be stored at K Area until it can be shipped to WIPP. Savannah River Site officials reported in August that just over 17 kilograms of the material had been downblended since the mission began in September 2016. Current operations cover one 12-hour shift per day, seven days a week. A scale-up that could come in fiscal 2020 would cover two 12-hour shifts per day, seven days a week.
It is unclear how much the mission costs, as funding is pulled as needed from the SRS nuclear materials budget item. That item is getting $350 million for fiscal 2019.
With the passage of the Tuesday’s recommendation, the CAB will send the document to Energy Department headquarters, where officials can fully or partially accept it, or deny it. There is no timeline for a decision.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has requested $79 million for fiscal year 2020 for its own dilute-and-dispose program. Negotiations on 2020 spending bills were deadlocked at deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, but both the House and the Senate have agreed to fund the NNSA dilute-and-dispose program, which will treat the 34 metric tons of plutonium once bound for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
The NNSA facility will be located in K-Area nearby the Environmental Management dilute-and-dispose program and, like the Environmental Management program, send its immobilized plutonium mixture to WIPP.
