ARLINGTON, Va. — The second of two Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power reactors could this year obtain a license to start producing tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons, a National Nuclear Security Administration official said here Thursday.
The government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) already produces tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons by irradiating tritium -roducing burnable absorber rods in the Watts Bar Unit 1 reactor during normal operating cycles. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state designs the rods for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which extracts the tritium from the rods at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
By Sept. 30 or sooner, Watts Bar Unit 2 in Rhea County, Tenn., will have the approval it needs to irradiate the tritium-bearing rods, Kelly Cummins, NNSA program executive officer for strategic materials, said during a panel presentation at the ExchangeMonitor’s annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit.
The Tennessee Valley Authority has “submitted a license amendment request to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin irradiation of these lithium rods in Watts Bar 2 [and] we expect that license amendment to be approved this fiscal year,” Cummins said.
With both Watts Bar Unit 1 and Unit 2 pumping out tritium, the NNSA should meet its goal of producing nearly 3 kilograms of material every 18 months by 2027, Cummins said. The reactors have to burn U.S.-origin fuel when irradiating the rods, since commercially available fuel cannot be used for weapons programs, by international convention.
Cummins told Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor that the NNSA still believes Watts Bar 2 will begin irradiation tritium rods in November 2020.
Tritium increases the explosive power of thermonuclear weapons. The gas degrades relatively rapidly, so the U.S. must refill the tritium reservoirs of existing weapons every few years. Groups including the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Institute in Washington estimate warheads need only a few grams of tritium each.
In response to an audience question, Cummins said the NNSA did not plan to produce tritium at TVA’s Sequoyah reactor in Hamilton County, Tenn., which is also licensed for that purpose.
