The Savannah River Plutonium Production Facility (SRPPF) in South Carolina will have 305 gloveboxes, the president of the operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) told a state nuclear panel Friday.
“The main process building will have over 300 — 305,” said Jeff Griffin, president of Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS).
“As you can see here, 88% of those are authorized for construction and over 50% are actually in construction,” Griffin told the meeting of the South Carolina Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council (GNAC).
“These glove boxes are large and complex, they are not easy to build,” Griffin said. “They have to be built to exacting standards, as some of you will be well aware of.”
With Savannah River developing its plutonium pits production facility, management is coordinating with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which will also need gloveboxes for its pits facility, Griffin said.
There are “a limited number of glovebox manufacturers that are capable of doing this,” Griffin said. The governor’s nuclear advisory council meets twice yearly.