The Energy Department on Wednesday published a long-awaited environmental review that paves the way for the agency to accept more than 450 casks of spent nuclear fuel from Germany for processing and storage at the agency’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
The spent fuel contains U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium, which was shipped to Germany from 1965 through 1988 as part of the Atoms for Peace program started by the Dwight Eisenhower administration. The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates it will take about three-and-a-half years and 30 shipments to deliver the 900 kilograms of the weapon-grade material by sea from Germany.
The spent fuel is now stored in 455 CASTOR casks, which Germany will ship to Joint Base Charleston in South Carolina. After that, the material will be sent by rail to the Savannah River Site (SRS). The spent fuel takes the form of about 1 million tennis-ball-sized graphite spheres with uranium in their cores.
The Energy Department plans to store the repatriated material in SRS’ H- or L-Areas “until processing facilities are ready and processing would not interfere with other missions,” the agency said in an online notice published Wednesday.
Germany would pay to ship the material to the U.S., and reimburse DOE for the processing at SRS, the agency said in the final environmental assessment. Germany asked the U.S. to take the material back in 2012.
The Savannah River Site generally processes foreign nuclear material at H Canyon facility and stores it on-site until it can be shipped to a repository. Sometimes, the material is converted to reactor fuel and shipped offsite.
In September, the DOE-chartered Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board voted narrowly — 10 for and nine against — to oppose sending the highly enriched uranium to SRS.