Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
1/22/2016
A draft environmental assessment (EA) from the Department of Energy finds minimal risk in a possible, heatedly contested plan for the Savannah River Site to receive and process highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Germany. The Department of Energy reported Friday that completion of the draft EA does not constitute a decision to accept the HEU, which would arrive in the form of 1 million graphite spheres. The department previously reported that each sphere is about the size of a tennis ball and would come from German research reactors.
Shipments would fall under the Atoms for Peace program established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which made the uranium available to countries that wanted it for research. Under the program, the U.S. agreed to eventually take the material back, which explains the effort to recover the uranium from Germany.
If feasibility studies show adequate promise, and the two nations proceed with the project, the German government would work with DOE to transport the material in chartered ships across the Atlantic Ocean to Joint Base Charleston, near Charleston, S.C., according to the draft EA. The material would then travel by train to SRS in accordance with U.S. regulatory requirements. Once on site, the HEU would be processed and dispositioned into a less dangerous form using the site’s H Canyon, the only hardened chemical separations plant still in existence in the United States.
The draft EA addresses the potential impacts from 30 shipments of spent nuclear fuel to the base near Charleston over a 3.5-year span, with each shipment transporting eight to 16 casks secured in regulation shipping containers. The document says there would be minimal nonradiological impacts and minimal effects from discharges of liquid effluents to ocean waters during travels across the Atlantic. Some of a vessel’s crew could be exposed to radiation while loading the containers of spent nuclear fuel onto the ship, while performing daily inspections of the vessel’s cargo, and while unloading the shipping containers at Joint Base Charleston, according to the draft EA. But the document cites a low likelihood of radiation emissions exceeding 100 millirems in a year. To put that in perspective, the American Nuclear Society reported that international standards allow exposure to as much as 5,000 millirems a year for those who work with and around radioactive material.
The controversial discussion of whether to accept the material gained traction two years ago, including a July 2014 meeting during which residents in the Aiken, S.C., area near SRS gave opposing views on the issue. The draft EA outlined several of those views in a pros/cons fashion, with those disagreeing with the shipment stating that accepting and processing the material would impact DOE’s obligations, commitments, funding, and schedule for treating and disposing SRS legacy waste stored in underground storage tanks on site. While the department previously stated there is a difference between HEU and nuclear waste, opponents wrote that "more waste should not be brought into South Carolina because there is no disposition path out of SRS or South Carolina for the spent nuclear fuel or high-level waste that would result from processing."
Other concerns outlined in the draft EA include the potential environmental and human health risks associated with processing and the fact that SRS infrastructure needs are increasing due to outdated facilities. Specifically, SRS has reported that H Canyon needs substantial renovation and restoration. "Commenters questioned whether these operational challenges at H-Canyon could affect the ability to process the spent nuclear fuel from Germany after it is at SRS," DOE wrote in the assessment.
Stakeholders who support the receipt of German HEU said there is a high potential for socioeconomic benefits and that there is "availability of unique facilities, infrastructure, and technical expertise at SRS." Those resources include the Savannah River National Laboratory, which conducted research in 2012 on how to separate the fuel kernels from the graphite matrix, the first step in processing the fuel, according to the draft EA. Germany provided $10 million to fund the research; if there is a decision to proceed with the project, Germany would also bear the costs associated with acceptance, processing, and disposition of the material, according to the draft EA.
Other reasons cited by stakeholders to accept the material include strong safety and environmental records by site workers, the fact that it would sustain the site’s contributions to nuclear nonproliferation, and the perceived benefit that German funding of the project could result in new technologies that could be used later for treating domestic wastes, secure jobs, and retain technical expertise, and would defray the costs of operating and maintaining H Canyon and other SRS infrastructure.
