Uranium production is ramping up at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS), with plans to produce nearly 23 metric tons of high-level uranium for fuel production,and other purposes for the DOE nuclear complex.
That was the message that the SRS Citizens Advisory Board heard Tuesday during the panel’s regular bimonthly meeting at the University of South Carolina-Aiken.
SRS is restarting recovery of uranium at its H-Canyon facility, DOE announced recently.
DOE’s Nuclear Energy Office has estimated a potential for 26 metric tons of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU within the DOE nuclear complex that can be used for advanced reactors, said Tara Armstead, operations manager with Fluor prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS),
Of that 26 tons, SRS already has 3.1 metric tons, Armstead said.
The current pathway to HALEU production and distribution includes making repairs at H Canyon, a large scale chemical separations facility at the 310-square-mile site in South Carolina. Those should be completed around July of this year, followed by a first production cycle in October 2027, said the SRNS manager.
By January 2028, SRS expects to be sending its first HALEU shipment to Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), about 300 miles north in Tennessee, Armstead said. That would be the first of about 15 shipments in that initial part of the mission, while DOE continues ramping up production.
DOE has prioritized HALEU fuel feedstock for potential use in advanced reactions. HALEU is enriched to between 5% and 20%.
“The demand is for 49 metric tons, and that’s only expected to grow,” Armstead said. “So when we looked at what we could do, we said, ‘Hey…we could do an additional 19.7 metric tons and that covers about 80 percent of what we have in inventory.’ So we’re still meeting our disposition goals and now it’s being beneficially reused for power.”
Among other uses, the repurposed uranium will support research development, and will power small modular reactors, as well as the smaller form micro reactors, according to Armstead. Additionally, the stockpiles will allow the United States to reduce its dependence on uranium sourced from other countries.