Y-12 Relocates Uranium Canning Operations
Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
8/7/15
A high priority at the Y-12 National Security Complex is moving work out of the 9212 complex, the oldest and shakiest of the Oak Ridge plant’s production facilities.
It appears, based on a newly released report by staff of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, that such actions may be under way.
In their July 10 weekly memo to DNFSB headquarters in Washington, site representatives said Consolidated Nuclear Security – the government’s managing contractor at Y-12 – had approved initiations of “canning operations” at Building 9204-2E. The building, also known as Beta-2E, is best known for housing Y-12’s assembly and disassembly of nuclear warhead parts.
The canning operations involve placing weapon-grade uranium material into a sealed container for storage in the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility – Y-12’s highest-security storage structure.
The memo said that prior to July, that work had been carried out in 9212, the main uranium processing complex at Oak Ridge.
The safety board report said establishing this capability at Beta-2E is “one of the key near-term material-at-risk (MAR) reduction measures” identified in the plant’s Highly Enriched Uranium Mission Strategy. Moving this mission to Beta-2E will allow dismantled parts to be canned and sent directly to the uranium storage facility, the report said.
“This, in turn, reduces the MAR in Building 9212 by reducing the number of parts that require interim storage in Building 9212 before being canned,” staff said.
