The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has implemented a new initiative aimed at streamlining spent fuel operations and cutting costs in the process.
Workers with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the site’s management and operations provider, are making better use of the transfer bay in L Area, according to the latest edition of SRNS Today, a monthly newsletter detailing the contractor’s work.
The transfer bay is used to load and ship spent nuclear fuel casks on-site, and to receive material from domestic and foreign locations. The spent fuel is sent to H Canyon, where it is processed and converted to a form suitable for permanent disposition or for commercial use.
The spent fuel at SRS was previously used in reactors at the site and other DOE facilities to produce nuclear materials for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions said it could not reveal how much material is handled during shipments for security reasons, but said shipment schedules are sporadic in nature.
SRNS environmental management (EM) personnel recently cited concerns about spent fuel scheduling, according to the newsletter. In short, shippers prefer to transport casks in warmer months during better weather conditions. However, heavily relying on warmer months could cause several issues, Geoff Hendrick, the SRNS L Area deputy facility manager, said in the newsletter. Those issues could include a backlog of casks, which would impact delivery times to H Canyon and increase the cost to complete work. The contractor did not provide details on the potential expense spikes.
An SRNS-led team was charged with developing ways to prevent a backlog of casks destined for H Canyon. The personnel identified places for improvements, including modifying maintenance schedules so that multiple repairs at L Area are made at the same time, instead of spreading them out over a longer period. The change maximizes the availability of the transfer bay, according to the monthly report. Other improvements include eliminating redundant procedures that take up too much time, and using a better absorbent to dry the casks before shipment.
The improvements have increased transfer bay availability by 152 percent, according to SRNS. “We found that, in addition to being able to maximize transfer bay availability and the number of casks we can safely process, the (team) identified areas where we could make our challenging work easier for our employees in the field,” Hendrick said.
The SRS spent nuclear fuel campaign includes the receipt of the material from other countries through nonproliferation programs such as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI). Most often, the material is in the form of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and is processed at H Canyon. Roughly 3,050 bundles of spent fuel are stored at SRS.
