Todd Jacobson
WC Monitor
6/27/2014
Raising questions about how much the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management supports National Nuclear Security Administration missions, the House Appropriations Committee last week directed $21.3 million in funding for nonproliferation work in Russia to go toward spent foreign fuel work at the Savannah River Site and the Idaho National Laboratory. In the report accompanying its version of the Fiscal Year 2015 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, the committee said the NNSA has “not been accounting for the costs of its material removal program and is placing an increasing financial burden on the Defense Environmental Cleanup program to pay for these costs.”
The bill provides $161.2 million for efforts to remove and secure nuclear and radiological materials around the world, $28.7 million more than the President’s request, but includes a provision preventing NNSA nonproliferation work from continuing in Russia unless the Secretary of Energy certifies the work is in the national security interest of the U.S.
Committee: EM Funding is For Cleanup, Not NNSA Removal Activities
With an increased amount of spent foreign fuel pouring into the sites from President Obama’s four-year effort to secure vulnerable nuclear materials around the world, the committee directed DOE to reanalyze the costs of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative program and provide a report to Congress within 90 days of the enactment of the bill outlining an updated cost sharing arrangement for spent fuel storage, processing and other NNSA missions that EM supports, citing feedstock production. “Funding for Defense Environmental Cleanup is intended to be used for the cleanup of the legacy of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, not to meet the costs of international material consolidation and removal activities in support of U.S. nonproliferation goals,” the committee said.
Since President Obama announced a four-year effort to secure vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in 2009, the NNSA said it has removed more than 5,060 kilograms of nuclear material from around the world, removing all highly enriched uranium from 12 countries/locations. It also completed 24 bilateral physical protection assessments of foreign facilities housing U.S.-obligated nuclear material, and completed security upgrades at 32 sites in Russia.
NNSA/EM Cost-Sharing Agreement 10 Years Old
That increase in work has meant a greater burden on the Office of Environmental Management, which has a cost-sharing agreement with the NNSA that the House Appropriations Committee suggested was in need of updating. “The cost sharing arrangement between the NNSA and Office of Environmental Management (EM) is nearly ten years old and was negotiated before the President’s Four-Year Goal brought increased quantities of foreign spent fuel into the U.S. for management and disposal by EM,” the committee said in the report accompanying its bill.
DOE is currently hoping to begin operations at Savannah River’s H-Canyon HB-Line for oxide production to produce plutonium feedstock for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, with H-Canyon and HB-Line slated to eventually produce 3.7 metric tons of MOX feedstock. DOE is also conducting an environmental assessment on processing in H-Canyon highly enriched uranium from Germany. The 900 kilograms of U.S.-origin HEU under consideration for processing 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.
Another project under consideration would involve the return of U.S.-origin HEU from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, which would pay DOE for the processing. That includes about 23,000 liters of material resulting from molybdenum-99 production, which would be downblended to low enriched uranium at H-Canyon for use as fuel in commercial nuclear power plants. The latest schedule calls for preparations for receipt and processing of the material to continue in FY 2014, while receipt of the material is set for September 2015, according to details in the Department of Energy’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request.
