A shipment of radioactive waste from a nuclear cleanup site in Scotland was sent over the weekend to the U.S. Energy Department’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., Scottish newspaper Sunday Post reported.
The radioactive waste was loaded onto a U.S. Air Force cargo plane and took off from Scotland on Saturday, the paper said, adding that the highly enriched uranium will then be headed to a Tennessee facility.
NNSA could not be reached by deadline Monday to confirm the shipment.
The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Euratom Supply Agency announced last year at the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit a deal to swap nuclear material between the United States and Euratom member states, based on a memorandum of understanding signed in 2014 between the two entities for highly enriched uranium exchanges.
As part of that agreement, the United Kingdom said it would ship to the U.S. roughly 700 kilograms of excess highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the Dounreay site in Scotland in exchange for a different kind of HEU that the U.S. would send to the European Atomic Energy Community in France for conversion into medical isotopes. These isotopes would then be used to diagnose and treat cancer in Europe.
The U.K. is currently decommissioning the Dounreay facility, the site of a former fast reactor. Radioactive waste management is part of the closure. U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority documents last year showed the Euratom Supply Agency has approximately one ton of unirradiated HEU, most of which is stored at Dounreay.
The Savannah River Site has regularly received shipments of foreign nuclear material for processing and disposal. In March the site began receiving liquid HEU from Canada for processing at its H Canyon facility, converting it into low-enriched uranium to be sent to the Tennessee Valley Authority for use in nuclear power reactors.
Redacted documents outlining SRS nuclear materials management plans from the last two years showed the site will receive plutonium, uranium, and other nuclear material shipments for the next 15-plus years.
