Site Removes 26 Sealed Plutonium Sources Under Source Recovery Project
NS&D Monitor
5/15/2015
The Savannah River Site has removed 26 sealed plutonium-238 sources in collaboration with the Off-Site Source Recovery Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the site announced this week. At Savannah River, the Tritium Facilities Analytical Laboratory had needed the sources to calibrate equipment. But in 2013, M&O contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions showed that it could calibrate the equipment using electrical heat standards designed at the Savannah River National Laboratory. “These sources have been safely managed without incident throughout their use at SRS,” Lee Schifer, SRNS Director of Tritium Operations, said in a statement. “But properly managing plutonium-238 requires significant cost and effort. It just made good sense to find a way to disposition them once they were no longer needed.”
The LANL source recovery program, run by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Global Material Security, aims to remove excess or unwanted sources. The Savannah River sources are currently being stored at a consolidation facility at Los Alamos, but are ultimately slated for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
