The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina should be ready to start shipping certain transuranic waste from downblended plutonium to its underground disposal site in New Mexico by the end of the summer, an agency official told the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board Tuesday.
The Savannah River Site (SRS) goal is to start shipping “criticality control overpacks” of downblended plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico by the third quarter of fiscal 2022, said Herbert Crapse, Jr., the director of the nuclear material programs division at SRS.
That is in keeping with a previously-stated timetable articulated by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which following a series of environmental reviews spanning the years before, during and after cancellation of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility’s disposal mission, decided to downblend some 13 metric tons of non-pit plutonium at Savannah River and ship it to WIPP for permanent disposal.
“I don’t have all the specifics,” Crapse said during the meeting in Aiken, S.C., a recording of which will be available via the SRS Youtube channel. “I wanted you to be aware that we are getting close to the first shipment,” of downblended transuranic waste from one active glove box within the site’s K Area, he added.
Officials from WIPP visited the federal complex in South Carolina in December to gauge SRS’ readiness to start shipping, Crapse said. The WIPP certification process is ongoing, he added.
The Savannah River Site has shipped its legacy transuranic waste to WIPP for years, Crapse said. There is currently about 573 cubic meters of legacy TRU waste stored on pads at the SRS Solid Waste Management Facility. The site also generates about 20 cubic meters per year, he added.
Through fiscal 2021 and the first three months of fiscal 2022, SRS has sent roughly 94 cubic meters of legacy TRU to WIPP, Crapse said. Were it not for the underground radiation leak accident at WIPP, which cost the disposal site about three years of operation, most of the legacy TRU from Savannah River would have already headed to WIPP, Crapse said.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, which shares SRS with the DOE Office of Environmental Management, has targeted fiscal 2026 for operation of additional glove boxes to start disposition of a 34-metric ton tranche of down-blended plutonium.
