A recent audit found that the Department of Energy has not developed a long-term strategy for operating the Savannah River Site’s H Canyon – a nuclear materials processing facility that is scheduled to remain open through 2024. The audit, conducted by the DOE Inspector General’s Office, was released on Sept. 26, and also says H Canyon has been “minimally funded” with only “marginal investment” in maintenance due to budget challenges.
Built in the 1950s, H Canyon is the nation’s only chemical separations plant still in existence, employed for processing uranium and plutonium. Its users include the DOE Offices of Environmental Management (EM) and Science, along with the agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). For example, the NNSA uses H Canyon after it recovers U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) that was sent to other countries in the 1950s under the Atoms for Peace program. H Canyon is also being used to process materials through the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) – another program under which the federal government collects foreign stocks of uranium and plutonium and removes the nuclear threats they pose by processing them through H Canyon. EM uses H Canyon to convert HEU into low-enriched uranium (LEU) by blending the material down into a less dangerous form.
During the audit, the DOE IG found that the department had not developed a long-term strategy to use H Canyon to support such missions. “We were informed by Environmental Management officials at the Headquarters and site level that there was no overall Department strategy for H Canyon operations,” according to the report. “A Headquarters Environmental Management official stated that this was because the program offices that drive their respective missions continually evaluate where H Canyon can support their missions. However, we noted that the Department had not fully integrated potential candidate materials from all programs into planning future H Canyon operations.”
The IG also found that funding and infrastructure issues plague the canyon. For example, SRS officials and stakeholders have noted that H Canyon and HB Line, the facility that feeds nuclear materials to the canyon, need infrastructure upgrades. Those include improvements to the seventh-level roof of H Canyon and the canyon’s air tunnel, which provide ventilation for the facility, and an alternate generator that needs to be installed for HB Line. The Department of Energy budget request for fiscal 2017 included about $5.8 million for H Canyon improvements. Congress did not appropriate funding before the Oct. 1 deadline, and the nation is currently under a continuing resolution (CR) that freezes funding at fiscal 2016 levels through Dec. 9. A specific budget line for H Canyon improvements was not in place during previous fiscal years. SRS spokesman Jim Giusti said Tuesday he will likely not be able to provide the specific overall budget number for H Canyon.
The Inspector General’s Office said it has no recommendations for DOE because it determined the federal agency had initiated actions to evaluate future H Canyon operations. These include formation of a DOE Nuclear Policy Council in January 2015. Through that council, a working group was created to evaluate potential future missions for H Canyon. Then, in October 2015, the Savannah River Site’s Mission Development Council began a study to evaluate the remaining useful life of the H Canyon complex. A draft analysis prepared for the council discusses efforts to manage aging infrastructure and ways to manage H Canyon operations through 2034.
Giusti affirmed DOE has initiated actions to evaluate future H-Canyon operations. “The current level of funding supports limited operations and minimal infrastructure support,” he said.
