August 07, 2014

NNSA Releases Long-Awaited Tritium Production SEIS

By ExchangeMonitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration is proposing to consolidate its production of tritium to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar site, according to a recently released draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. The preferred alternative outlined in the long-awaited Aug. 1 SEIS outlines the NNSA’s interest in irradiating 2,500 tritium-producing burnable absorber rods at Watts Bar, more than triple the number of TPBARs that are currently allowed to be irradiated at the site. The plan would allow for up to 5,000 TPBARs to be irradiated if needed in an emergency. Watts Bar 1 is currently used for tritium production, but the plan would allow for the use of Watts Bar 2 once it begins operations.

The NNSA and TVA had curbed the number of TPBARs irradiated at Watts Bar because of higher-than-expected permeation of tritium, but the SEIS concludes that there would be little impact to the environment even with higher permeation levels. The 1999 EIS governing tritium production at TVA reactors assumed a permeation rate of 1 curie per year per TPBAR, but rates have been three or four times higher, and the SEIS assumed a permeation rate of 10 curies of tritium a year.

The 1999 EIS allowed up to 3,400 TPBARs to be irradiated in TVA’s Watts Bar and Sequoyah 1 and 2 reactors, but the Sequoyah reactors have never been used for tritium production and no more than 2,304 TPBARs were ever irradiated at Watts Bar before the permeation issue forced the NNSA to cut back on the number of TPBARs being irradiated. The NNSA said it currently needs to irradiate 2,500 TPBARs a year to meet production needs. “Both the 1999 EIS and this SEIS demonstrate that the potential environmental impacts from irradiation of TPBARs (whether 3,400, 2,500, or 5,000) in the Watts Bar and Sequoyah reactors would be small, regardless of whether the permeation rate is 1 curie or 10 curies of tritium per TPBAR per year,” the SEIS said, adding later: “This SEIS concludes that the potential proposed action, when considered along with other nearby current and reasonably foreseeable activities, would not have any cumulatively significant environmental impact.”

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