Several Companies Interested in Supplying Y-12 With Depleted Uranium
NS&D Monitor
4/10/2015
Consolidated Nuclear Security, the government’s managing contractor at Y-12, said this week that it has received “several” responses to a notice issued in mid-January seeking up to 6,800 tons of high-purity depleted uranium for production purposes. Contractor spokeswoman Ellen Boatner said those responses are being evaluated to determine if there will be a procurement to follow and how to proceed. She did not release any information on a possible timetable for the acquisition plans.
In its announcement earlier this year, CNS said the National Nuclear Security Administration could supply up to 1,100 cylinders of uranium hexafluoride for possible use in DU metal production. Earlier, Boatner said the depleted uranium would be used in production of nuclear weapons. “That’s what we do,” she said. “The DU will be used for production purposes,” she said.
Former Oak Ridge Counterintelligence Chief Suing FBI Over Dismissal
NS&D Monitor
4/10/2015
Richard Lambert, who headed up the Knoxville, Tenn., FBI office before serving as the head of counterintelligence for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Field Office, is suing the Department of Justice and the FBI for $2.5 million, alleging that an FBI lawyer cost him his Oak Ridge job. In the lawsuit, filed April 2 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee, Lambert said he was falsely accused of violating ethics rules when he became the top counterintelligence official at the Oak Ridge Field Office upon his retirement from the FBI. Lambert retired from the FBI in 2012, took a job with DOE shortly thereafter, but left the DOE job in 2013. The lawsuit was first reported by the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Lambert said an FBI lawyer “issued a grossly negligent and erroneous legal opinion which falsely alleged that Plaintiff was violating the criminal conflict of interest provisions,” triggering a criminal probe and stirring up rumors that he would be indicted. In particular, Lambert was accused of violating a one-year “cooling off” period for federal employees, which would have prevented him from speaking with FBI employees detailed to DOE’s Oak Ridge Field Office. “Due to the notoriety and stigma surrounding defendants’ erroneous legal opinion and its plain implication that he is a federal felon, Mr. Lambert is currently unemployed and unemployable,” Lambert said in the lawsuit, which he filed himself. Oak Ridge National Laboratory declined to comment.
Spallation Neutron Source Moving Forward After Rough Few Months
NS&D Monitor
4/10/2015
After a rough few months last fall, when two of the target vessels failed prematurely and research operations were sporadic, the Spallation Neutron Source appears to be in good shape moving forward. The SNS systems have operated a reduced power level in 2015 while waiting on additional target vessels to arrive as backup, but the research operations have been good and consistent at 850 kilowatts, according to Kevin Jones, who heads the accelerator division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “We just reported our performance for the January-March quarter to the Department of Energy, and I’m pleased to tell you that our beam availability against schedule for this period was 94 percent,” Jones said in response to questions. “Just last week we had our first-ever week with beam availability of over 99 percent (less than one hour of down time for 159 hours of operation).”
A newly manufactured target vessel arrived April 9 and will serve as a backup for future operations when the power level is increased. The SNS team is taking a number of steps to better understand what caused previous failures with the stainless-steel vessel and help prevent any material issues in the future. “This is a standard mercury flow target,” Jones said of the new vessel, “but [it] incorporates two important design changes,” he said. “One design change eliminates the trapezoidal plate that was the location of three of the last four leaks. That component is now machined from a single piece of metal stock.”
The other design change is a “bolt-on water shroud” that will enhance the ability of the operations team to better understand evaluations of target vessels in the future. The ORNL team has also decided to put in place some additional instruments on the new target to try to get more data on the “structural response” of the vessel after it is hit with pulses of the proton beam (which produces the neutrons).
Power Levels to Ramp Up Later This Month
The SNS team plans to ramp up power levels later this month. “Next week we will be off for a short scheduled maintenance period, during which we will reconfigure the accelerator to support higher power operation,” Jones said. ” When we decided last fall to run at 850 kW we made some adjustments to reduce our overall power consumption and hence reduce utility costs. We will also undertake some tasks intended to ensure that we can operate well at higher power.”
After the brief pause, the plan is to restart the SNS systems on April 18 and resume neutron production three days later, the ORNL official said. Jones said the lab’s goal is to run the beam power in the range of 1.23 megawatts for sustained operations after the SNS resumes neutron production. “If the current target operates well at the increased power level we anticipate that the next scheduled target replacement would occur in early October 2015,” he said.
