Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
09/12/2014
As the Department of Energy pursues yet another new mission for H-Canyon involving Belgian material, questions remain on Savannah River tank space issues and whether a new dissolver will be funded for the facility. The Department of Energy is pursuing a host of international nonproliferation missions for the nuclear chemical separations plant at Savannah River and is considering purchasing a new dissolver to increase throughput capacity. However, H-Canyon uses space in Savannah River’s tank farms, which has been limited due to funding. “It is going to be very crucial to make sure we have adequate budget funding on the liquid waste side to accommodate that, or we are going to have to start slowing down some of the processing that we are doing,” Jay Rhoderick, DOE EM Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tank Waste & Nuclear Material, said last week at the RadWaste Summit. “That is one of the issues we currently have, whether we should be going forward with the purchase of a third dissolver if we are going to have to keep H-Canyon at a lower processing rate because we don’t have the funding on the liquid waste side.”
The decision comes as discussions continue on yet another potential new mission for H-Canyon. DOE is in talks with Belgium’s Institute for Radio Elements on potentially processing highly enriched uranium targets that are residue from the production of Molybdenum-99 for medical use. That involves a total of 100 kilograms of HEU that is 90 percent U.S.-origin. It resides in 560 containers stored at IRE in Fleurus, Belgium, and 62 containers stored at the U.K.’s Dounreay site. DOE is hoping to develop a statement of intent with the Belgians this fall, according to Rhoderick.
Belgian HEU’s Fiberglass Filters Pose Challenge
The material is stored in stainless steel canisters containing fiberglass filters, which can’t be processed in H-Canyon. “So either they need to find a process to repackage or we need to find a process in which we can destroy the fiberglass filters prior to the material going into H-Canyon. That’s one of the issues we are working through with the Belgians now,” Rhoderick said. It is still uncertain whether DOE will accept the material, DOE-Savannah River spokesman Jim Giusti said. “No decisions have been made at this time by either the Department or the IRE facility on acceptance/transfer of this material. The discussions are in the early stages of material characterization and concept analysis of how the material could be transported and processed,” he said in a written response.
H-Canyon Sees Big Turnaround
H-Canyon has seen a big turnaround in recent years. In 2011 the Department said it planned to largely curtail operations at the facility, but since then numerous new missions have emerged. Those include a campaign being launched now for downblending the large inventory of used fuel in the Savannah River’s L-Basin and another to produce plutonium oxide as potential feedstock for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
Additional missions on the international front include a contract to receive 6,000 gallons of HEU from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited starting in summer 2015 under a one to two year shipping campaign, as well as receiving 1,000 AECL fuel assemblies in Savannah River’s L-Basin. DOE is also working with Germany on potential processing graphite spheres from the pebble bed AVR gas-cooled research reactor at the Juelich Research Center. Though no decisions have been made yet, the German effort could begin as early as next year. Processing of the foreign material would be fully funded by those governments and entities.
In March, the Obama Administration also announced plans to remove “hundreds of kilograms” of plutonium and HEU from Japan’s Fast Critical Assembly, and the HEU will be downblended and the plutonium prepared for disposition. DOE is working on receipt and disposition options for the plutonium, Rhoderick said, noting that Japan will ship the material to the U.S. before 2019. He declined to discuss the options or amount of the material.
Third Dissolver Necessary to Increase Throughput
In light of the new missions DOE is seeking a third dissolver to increase throughput, a decision that is under consideration now as the Department develops its Fiscal Year 2016 budget request. The cost to procure and install the dissolver would be between $10 million and $15 million and it would take two to three years to install after funds are made available. “The third dissolver would replace an existing obsolete dissolver in H Canyon that has not been used since the 1970s,” Giusti said. “The third dissolver would have similar capability and capacity as the H Canyon dissolvers currently in use and the additional dissolver would accelerate the disposition of materials currently designated for processing in H Canyon.” DOE hopes to add the dissolver in 2016.
Tank Farm Space Limiting Factor
However, space in the tank farms could be the limiting factor. This year the tank farms took 50,000 gallons from H-Canyon, but in future years it would be about 150,000 gallons, according to Rhoderick. “We also need our liquid waste side of the house to be able to take a larger quantity of material into the tank farms, so we are working with them,” he said. “It’s really a balance as we bring up Salt Waste Processing Facility, a lot of activity on liquid waste tank farm we have to manage to balance those priorities.”
Earlier this year, DOE told M&O contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions that it expects budget constraints to restrict the amount of high-level waste that can be transferred from H-Canyon to the tank farms, according to a July 25 Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staff report. “While SRNS has been trying to reduce the volume of waste they transfer, these volumes will likely impact the amount of spent nuclear fuel, plutonium, and enriched uranium that can be processed,” the report states. Enacted funding for the Savannah River liquid waste program stood at $838.5 million in Fiscal Year 2013, which has dropped down to a current level of $690.5 million. DOE’s FY’15 budget requests $722.8 million for the liquid waste program. Meanwhile, DOE requested $260 million in Fiscal Year 2015 for nuclear material stabilization and disposition at Savannah River, compared to $272 million in enacted funding in FY’14.
