More Details on Plans for German HEU Processing
WC Monitor
6/6/2014
The Department of Energy has released more details on plans to process highly enriched uranium from Germany at the Savannah River Site. The 900 kilograms of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium comes in the form of graphite spheres from the pebble bed AVR gas-cooled research reactor at the Juelich Research Center in Germany, and could be processed at the site’s H-Canyon facility. The processing in H-Canyon would take about three years to complete removing all graphite from the fuel, according to a DOE notice posted this week on an environmental assessment for the action.
The notice states: “DOE would install a capability in H-Canyon at SRS to chemically remove the graphite from the fuel kernels via a molten salt technique (chemical digestion) being developed by the Savannah River National Laboratory.” It adds, “The fuel kernels would be stored in H-Canyon. After all the fuel kernels have been extracted they would be processed through the H-Canyon. This would separate the uranium from thorium and fission products.” The separated HEU could be downblended for use as reactor fuel, downblended for disposal or vitrified in the site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility, according to the notice. Initial investigations at Savannah River were funded by a $1.5 million grant from Germany, and the work will proceed under an $8.5 million Work for Others Agreement recently signed with Germany.
As part of the environmental assessment, DOE will hold a public meeting on the scope of the study on June 24 in North Augusta, S.C., and public comments will be accepted through July 21. The proposal has gained some opposition in South Carolina, notably with the advocacy group Savannah River Site Watch. “While DOE is presenting the import of this spent fuel as step being taken for nuclear non-proliferation reasons, it is becoming clearer that the main driver is the lack of will by Germany to properly address its own nuclear waste problem,” SRS Watch Director Tom Clements said in a statement. “While some at SRS are eyeing the large sum of money that could be made on processing the spent fuel at SRS, Germany is obligated to implement the best practices in managing its own highly radioactive commercial spent fuel and that does not include dumping their problem on the Savannah River Site.”
