The last big segment of the Southwest Experimental Fast-Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) has been uprooted from its Arkansas home and shipped to the Nevada Nuclear Security Site for disposal.
The reactor vessel and remaining components from the 20-megawatt, sodium-cooled test reactor arrived at the NNSS on Dec. 13, according to a January report to the Department of Energy’s Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board. The shipping process began in late November with the Nevada Site’s environmental contractor, Navarro Research and Engineering, observing the loading process at West Fork, Ark.
The NNSS accepts certain types of low-level radioactive waste and mixed-low-level waste from facilities authorized by the Energy Department or the Department of Defense. It does not take transuranic waste or spent fuel. The SEFOR shipment did not include the reactor or the reactor fuel, according to the report to the advisory board.
The Arkansas reactor was built in the 1960s and retired in the early 1970s by the Atomic Energy Commission, a forerunner to DOE. The University of Arkansas used SEFOR for research for more than a decade and subsequently became the nuclear site’s caretaker. “There is still some low-level stuff to be removed” before the site is deemed “greenfield,” university spokesman Steve Voorhies said in a Monday email.
In May 2018, EnergySolutions signed a $9.45 million contract to complete decommissioning and dismantling the facility. EnergySolutions had started decommissioning work in 2016 paid for through a $10.5 million DOE grant to the university in October 2016. But the final funding was not lined up until passage of the fiscal 2018 federal omnibus budget package.
Altogether the cleanup costs have amounted to about $24 million in DOE grants, according to University of Arkansas spokesman Steve Voorhies.
By the end of May 2019, the decommissioning should be finished. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality is expected to verify the final cleanup.
