This month, the Energy Department will begin preparing some 6 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week.
Downblending will begin once the quasi-independent DOE agency completes an assessment of a recently completed two-month long cold run of the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) downblending operation. Downblending is managed by SRS management and operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS).
For the cold run, SRNS employees used a nonradioactive material in a mockup glove-box facility that is physically similar to plutonium, Angie French, SRNS communications lead on operations for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said by email.
“They go through the steps involved in down-blending, which include blending the non-radioactive surrogate with an inert material, then packaging it in cans,” French said. “The single down blend evolution takes less than a week.” Practice runs were observed by the site’s K Area management team.
Next, an independent panel will observe and evaluate the site-based assessment of the cold run to determine whether facility employees are proficient to proceed with actual downblending. That panel comprises on-site personnel with knowledge in plutonium operations, but who are not directly involved in this mission.
Initial downblend operations will be performed four days a week in K Area. Downblending will be conducted on one operation shift on each of the four days using personnel already working at the site. If DOE decides to scale up the operation for round-the-clock downblending, the site would have to hire 30 to 40 more workers.
Once hired, it takes about three years to clear, train, and qualify the new personnel for downblending operations. French did not provide a detailed schedule or cost for the operation. “The actual cost and timeline for down-blending operations will be dependent on available funding and staffing,” she stated.
The 6 metric tons of plutonium to be downblended at SRS are part of a 13-ton tranche of Cold War-era material.
Of the 13-ton cache, the 6 tons of plutonium headed to WIPP are in non-pit form, meaning that although the material is suitable for a bomb, it is not in the right shape to be plugged into a nuclear warhead. Another 7 tons stored at DOE’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, is in pit form.
The 6 tons of non-pit plutonium were officially put on a path to WIPP in a March 29 in a DOE record of decision that codified the results of an extended environmental assessment published in December. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has said downblended material from the 6-ton cache should start arriving at WIPP in the early 2020s. DOE has not settled on a disposal method for the remaining 7 tons of pit plutonium.
The 13-ton tranche is separate from a 34 metric-ton stockpile of surplus weapon-usable plutonium that is officially slated to be turned into fuel for commercial nuclear plants in the SRS Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility under an arms-reduction pact with Russia finalized in 2010.
The Obama administration wants to cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility over the objections of South Carolina’s congressional delegation, and the parent companies of the facility’s prime contractor, CB&I AREVA MOX Services. Moniz this week called the MOX plan “impossible.”
Congress has so far not agreed to the Obama administration’s request. A draft fiscal 2017 DOE budget bill that died on the House floor in May forbade the administration from canceling MOX. A draft Senate budget bill approved in April left the door open for cancellation, without expressly endorsing the administration’s plan.
