The Energy Department is scrapping a never-used step in the Savannah River Site’s spent nuclear fuel (SNF) processing campaign following a potential inadequacy at the site’s L Area, where the fuel is stored. Maxine Maxted, the site’s program manager for SNF, addressed the issue Tuesday during a meeting of the Nuclear Materials Committee of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB).
The SRS campaign includes the receipt of spent nuclear fuel from other countries through nonproliferation programs such as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI). Most often, the material is in the form of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and is processed at the site’s H Canyon facility. Overall, roughly 3,050 bundles of spent fuel are stored at SRS.
DOE noted a potential inadequacy was in a recent documented safety analysis (DSA) that details the spent fuel operation. The operation includes the transport of SNF to the site’s H Canyon for processing. Maxted said one of the steps in the operation allows workers to load the material into a storage unit inside a 70-ton tank and transport the material back to L Area – a step that would be used if there is an issue at H Canyon or in some other step of the process. But during studies of the operation, DOE found that the insert in the cask wasn’t heavy enough to keep the fuel elements stable during transport.
The agency essentially concluded that the entire step could be taken out of the process. “Nobody ever expects to have to do this activity,” Maxted said, adding that it has never actually been done before. “So the way we’re going to do to fix the problem is we’re going to take the activity out of our operations.”
When asked by board members what would happen if material must be returned to L Area, Maxted said efforts would be made to put the step back into the DSA, which would include an approval process.
Following the Nuclear Materials Committee meeting, the CAB’s Waste Management Committee received an update on bulk waste removal efforts executed by Savannah River Remediation (SRR), the site’s liquid waste contractor. Bulk waste removal handles the majority of the sludge waste in the SRS waste tanks and prepares the material for treatment. All told, there are more than 40 waste tanks at SRS filled with radioactive liquid sludge and salt waste that dates to back to Cold War-era nuclear weapons production operations. Treating the waste involves multiple facilities at SRS that break it down into a less harmful form. From there, the sludge waste is stored temporarily on-site until a long-term repository is named. The salt waste is sent to an on-site disposal facility.
SRR official Steve Thomas, along with DOE-SR official Jolene Seitz, explained that bulk waste removal efforts for Tank 15 began in October when four large pumps began mixing sludge waste to prepare the material for removal from the tank.
In July, SRS reported that South Carolina and the Environmental Protection Agency had refused to give the Energy Department more time to close Tank 15 and Tank 10 beyond the Sept. 30, 2016, deadline. DOE had requested two more years to remove bulk waste from Tank 10, and about one more year to remove bulk waste from Tank 15. The department cited technical concerns, along with a need to test a new waste-removal process. The issue is currently undergoing a dispute resolution, as the parties try to agree on a plan moving forward.
