Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
3/20/2015
PHOENIX, Ariz.—In order to limit the impacts of proposed budget cuts to new processing missions at Savannah River’s H-Canyon facility, the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Operations Office is working with the National Nuclear Security Administration on H-Canyon funding, DOE Savannah River Manager Dave Moody said here this week. Programs potentially impacted by cuts in DOE’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget request include a new effort to downblend highly enriched uranium from research reactor fuel stored at the site’s L-Basin, as well as a campaign to provide feedstock for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. But Moody said he hopes those programs can continue in the next fiscal year. “The budget process is long and involved and really doesn’t get put in concrete until we’ve actually had an appropriation from Congress,” he said during this year’s Waste Management conference. “We’re early in the process and none of us are setting our hair on fire. We see a number of options on how we will meet the commitments.”
Instead of the new downblending mission, DOE’s ‘16 budget request states it will focus on “safe, secure storage” at L-Basin. However, a new program to process liquid highly enriched uranium from Canada is supported in the latest budget request, and some of the L-Basin fuel can be processed in concert, Moody said. “Our goal for Fiscal ’16 is to continue on with the nuclear material work that we currently have going. We have funded programs from Canada in dispositioning Canadian liquids. In order to do that, we have to process with that material some of our spent fuel out of the basin,” he said. “We are taking advantage of funding this year to preposition some of those materials so we can operate H-Canyon—even at the president’s budget we will continue to operate H-Canyon. But we believe that along with our partners at NNSA we’ll have a full complement of nuclear materials activities in Fiscal ’16.”
At a House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee hearing this week, acting DOE cleanup chief Mark Whitney said an informal working group had been created between EM and the NNSA. “It’s something we need to understand better,” Whitney told WC Monitor on the sidelines of the hearing. “Initially we’ll be looking at the user needs for the facilities, we’ll be looking at the costs associated with everyone’s needs, and then we’ll go from there.”
FY’16 Budget Presents a Challenge
The FY’16 proposed funding level for spent nuclear fuel stabilization and disposition at Savannah River, which covers some H-Canyon activities, is $34.4 million, down $8.7 million from current funding levels. The request also includes $234.6 million for nuclear materials stabilization and disposition, a cut of $12.2 million from current levels. But Moody noted that many of the H-Canyon missions in the EM budget are supporting NNSA programs. “In Fiscal Year 2016 the nuclear materials budget presents a challenge to us. The Department is committed and NNSA and EM are actively working together to meet that challenge,” Moody said. “On one hand, NNSA is capturing proliferant materials worldwide and Savannah River Site is a key cog in that machinery, bringing those materials in and dispositioning them. So we are working with our partners in NNSA on how we will address the funding shortfalls.”
Several other international missions have been on the table for H-Canyon, largely funded by foreign governments, including potential missions from Germany and Belgium. Additionally, in September 2014 Savannah River launched a long-term campaign to process L-Basin spent fuel, which at that point had been estimated to take a total of eight-to-10 years and process about 1,000 bundles of Material Test Reactor fuel and up to 200 cores of High Flux Isotope Reactor fuel. Savannah River officials have said the benefits of the project include freeing up space in the crowded and aging L-Basin pool, as well as meeting nonproliferation goals and providing a source of low enriched uranium to be used for commercial reactor fuel.
DOE’s FY’16 request explained the proposed budget cuts as reflecting “the inability to support planned H-Canyon processing due to delays in the Salt Waste Processing Facility construction and operations and increased fees for foreign research reactor spent nuclear fuel receipts.” The request also does not mention continuation in FY’16 of a mission to continue dissolving plutonium in HB-Line to create feedstock for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility project.
