Plutonium downblending at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina has increased significantly following the addition of shifts in November 2018. Assuming things go well, another increase in shifts could come late in fiscal 2020, about a year sooner than the initial target date.
Workers have downblended just over 17 kilograms of weapon-usable plutonium to date in fiscal 2019, and are expected to meet the target of 25 kilograms before the end of the federal budget year on Sept. 30, according to SRS spokesman Monte Volk.
That target is nearly triple the 9.7 kilograms downblended in fiscal 2018 at Savannah River. All told, 41 kilograms of plutonium have been downblended –mixed with inhibitor materials to rid the plutonium of its ability to make weapons – since the mission began in September 2016.
Prior to the November 2018 ramp-up, SRS conducted the mission with single daily 12-hour shifts, four days per week. At that time, there was no specific employee count for the mission, carried out by workers with site management and operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) who had not been hired directly for that job. The contractor hired another 30 workers to increase the mission to two 12-hour shifts each day, seven days a week. These shifts include hours of overlap, so the work presently is not conducted 24 hours a day.
The next anticipated scale-up would bring operations to four 12-hour shifts per day, running seven days a week and 24 hours a day. “The operational commitment to begin four-shift operations within our existing glovebox is the beginning of FY22; however, the facility is targeting to begin in late FY20,” Volk said by email.
The mission involves diluting 6 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium, produced at Savannah River and the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado and now consolidated in South Carolina.
Under the SRS downblending mission, plutonium is diluted at the K Area complex. The resulting plutonium solution is stored for now at K Area and will be sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico when the 6 metric tons are fully processed.
The mission is expected to run through fiscal 2046.
