Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
4/3/2015
Risk reduction activities at the Savannah River Site’s 235-F facility would be largely put on hold in Fiscal Year 2016 under the Department of Energy’s budget request, DOE Savannah River Operations Office Manager Dave Moody told WC Monitor this week. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board urged action at the former plutonium processing facility in a formal 2012 recommendation, and DOE has since begun implementing a risk reduction plan to address the hazards posed by the facility. “At the present time, we have communicated to the Defense Board that at the president’s level the 235-F risk reduction activities will be put on hold until fiscal ’17,” Moody said. “Hopefully fiscal ’17 will be more conductive to initiating the inventory work at 235-F.”
Funding for SRS risk management operations are set at $387 million overall in DOE’s FY’16 budget request, compared to an enacted level of $398 million. The 235-F activities are funded in FY’15 and DOE is making “substantial progress” there, Moody said. “We are fully funded in Fiscal ’15 on 235-F risk reduction activities. We will continue those. We are isolating some of the electrical equipment and we have removed as much of the combustible material as we can,” he said. “The element of the process that we are not implementing in ’16 at the president’s budget level is starting removal activities of the cells in ’16.”
De-Energizing Work Underway
The facility contains residual plutonium-238 contamination in a highly dispersible powder form, and the DNFSB has raised concern that fires or earthquakes could lead to radiation releases. Last fall, DOE notified the Board that its implementation plan would be delayed 29 months until May 2021 due to budget issues in 2013 and early 2014, and those have been since put off further. But the cleanout of the facility has been progressing, and it is also being de-energized to reduce the risk of fire or other events. “Any electrical that was not necessary for safety has been de-energized,” Moody said. “You not only get rid of fuel in the combustibles but you also get rid of an initiator in the electrical.”
As Savannah River balances 235-F work among other high-risk facilities, such as the high-level waste tanks, Moody said the plutonium plant falls “somewhere in the middle” on the list of priorities. “235-F is really in the middle. It’s more than excess facilities, deactivation and decommissioning because of the unique nature of plutonium-238,” he said.