The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site said Friday it has begun downblending 6 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. The milestone follows DOE’s announcement on April 5 that it would downblend the material and send it to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for disposal.
The process of blending plutonium oxide with an inert material to create a mixture unusable for nuclear weapons is now underway in the SRS K Area Complex, the announcement said. While it was not clear at press time how much plutonium had so far been put through the downblending process, DOE-SR spokeswoman Sonya Goines said Friday over the phone that a small portion of the 6 metric tons was in fact being treated at K Area.
That marks the official startup of downblending, following readiness reviews that had been ongoing since the summer.
The material will be stored at the SRS Solid Waste Management facility after dilution; it will be sent at a later date to WIPP, which is expected to reopen in December or January after being closed to waste shipments following an underground fire and later, unrelated radiation release in February 2014.
The site made clear that the 6 metric tons of plutonium is separate from a 34-metric-ton cache to be eliminated under a U.S. nonproliferation agreement with Russia. The Obama administration has sought to cancel funding for the facility intended to turn the plutonium into commercial reactor fuel, instead preferring the downblending method.
“This project does not involve plutonium originally intended for disposition through the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility,” SRS said. “However, this is the same down-blending process that NNSA has proposed as an alternative to the MOX approach.”
The SRS press release did not cite a schedule or cost for downblending the 6 metric tons of plutonium. SRS previously said initial downblending operations will be performed four days a week in K Area. The process is expected to be completed over the next several years.
