The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site downblended 16 kilograms of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium in fiscal 2017, and is expected to nearly double amount in the current budget year.
Officials from the South Carolina facility reported the figure last week during a bimonthly meeting of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB). Downblending began in September 2016, the month before the beginning of fiscal 2017, but it was not immediately known how much material was processed in that first period.
In plutonium downblending, the material is diluted using inhibitor materials. The final solution is temporarily being stored at SRS but will eventually be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, N.M.
Ultimately this mission will cover 6 metric tons (6,000 kilograms) of plutonium, produced in the United States during the Cold War. None of the material is part of the larger tranche of 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium, which would be converted into commercial nuclear reactor fuel at the controversial Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility being built (though maybe not for much longer) at SRS .
Downblending operations are performed four days a week using equipment at the site’s K Area, where the plutonium is stored. Operations are conducted one shift per day, four days per week, using current personnel.
The Energy Department said last year it would hire 30 to 40 more workers and increase shifts following a decision to scale up the operation. That has yet to happen, SRS spokesman Monte Volk said by email: “DOE-SR operations, including new initiatives, are determined within overall approved funding levels.”
The DOE budget does not include a specific funding line item for the downblending project. The money comes out of the overall SRS budget line, which was roughly $1.4 billion in the last fiscal year. For fiscal 2018, which began on Oct. 1, SRS expects to downblend 30 kilograms of the plutonium, Volk said. He added that operations will likely continue for another 30 years or so.
“Based on continuing the current operating capabilities, the 6 metric tons of non-moxable plutonium identified in the April 2016 record of decision will be down blended by 2046,” he said.
Plutonium downblending began last year after a two-month cold run on a mockup facility, which was used to train the employees and familiarize them with the technology.
The Savannah River Site previously conducted plutonium downblending operations from October 2011 through September 2012. In that span, workers created 670 pipe-overpack containers of material. Some of the material remains at SRS and some has already been sent to WIPP, but DOE-SR would not confirm how much resides at either location. The operation ceased due to constrained budgets.
