The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) last month began receiving liquid highly enriched uranium from Canada under a controversial program that will have the material traveling major U.S. highways on its way to South Carolina for the next few years.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) said in an April 21 site report that SRS’ H Canyon facility began processing “the first shipment of liquid Highly Enriched Uranium this week,” but did not cite the HEU’s point of origin. DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) confirmed Monday the material came from Canada, but said it could not discuss amounts or frequency of the shipments.
The first shipment was complicated upon arrival when an unanticipated “hotspot” was found on one side of a container that provides radiological shielding after the material is removed from the shipping cask. This indicated insufficient radiological shielding in the so-called “pig.” Radiological protection personnel “labeled the hotspot before H-Canyon personnel relocated the pig so the hotspot would be facing the wall,” according to the DNFSB report. No corresponding issues were found in other pigs.
The shipping cask was emptied and the HEU was being moved to the site’s H Canyon facility, where it will be converted into low-enriched uranium. After processing, the material will be sent to the Tennessee Valley Authority for use in nuclear reactors.
HEU shipments from Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, to SRS near Aiken, S.C., are part of a 2010 agreement between then-U.S. President Barack Obama and then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Between 100 and 150 shipments will be needed to truck the 6,000 gallons of material, and DOE says it will take about three years to receive and process the material.
