The National Nuclear Security Administration is preparing a final environmental review for its new plutonium disposal program at the Savannah River Site, but not the thorough review a National Academies panel recommended earlier this year, the agency announced Wednesday.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency published its notice of intent to do an environmental impact statement about the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program in the Federal Register. Comments are due Feb. 1.
The program, which involves multiple National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites, plans to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium once scheduled to be turned into commercial reactor fuel in the now-cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The National Academies called for the NNSA to produce a wider-ranging programmatic environmental impact statement that would not only consider the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Programs’ effect on the Savannah River Site and nearby areas, but on every Department of Energy site that will participate in the program — especially the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is also a key participant in Surplus Plutonium disposition. The lab’s PF-4 plutonium facility will break down surplus plutonium pits, nuclear weapon cores, and convert their plutonium into plutonium oxide. The process will compete for space and personnel with NNSA’s program to cast new plutonium pits in PF-4 starting in 2024.
Plutonium oxide from Los Alamos would ship to the Savannah River Site where, in a facility under under construction at the site’s K-Area, it would be blended in new glove boxes with an inert material once called stardust in preparation for burial underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program is supposed to begin work in 2027 or 2028 and continue into the 2040s. It will cost about $20 billion to build and operate in that time, compared with an estimated $50 billion for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, DOE has said.
The NNSA is still working on an analysis of alternatives for Surplus Plutonium Disposition: a mandatory review in which the agency will weigh plans to get rid of the surplus plutonium using facilities at Savannah River and New Mexico against other disposal options.
