In order to limit the impacts of budget cuts to new processing missions at Savannah River’s H-Canyon facility, the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Operations Office is working with the National Nuclear Security Administration on H-Canyon funding, DOE Savannah River Manager Dave Moody said yesterday at the Waste Management Conference in Phoenix. Programs that would potentially be impacted by cuts in DOE’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget request include a new effort to downblend highly enriched uranium from research reactor fuel stored at the site’s L-Basin, as well as a campaign to provide feedstock for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. But Moody said he believes those programs can continue in the next fiscal year. “The budget process is long and involved and really doesn’t get put in concrete until we’ve actually had an appropriation from Congress,” he said. “We’re early in the process and none of us are setting our hair on fire. We see a number of options on how we will meet the commitments.”
Instead of the new downblending mission, DOE’s ‘16 budget request states it will focus on “safe, secure storage” at L-Basin. However, a new program to process liquid highly enriched uranium from Canada is supported in the latest budget request, and some of the L-Basin fuel can be processed in concert, Moody said. “Our goal for Fiscal ’16 is to continue on with the nuclear material work that we currently have going. We have funded programs from Canada in dispositioning Canadian liquids. In order to do that, we have to process with that material some of our spent fuel out of the basin,” he said. “We are taking advantage of funding this year to preposition some of those materials so we can operate H-Canyon—even at the president’s budget we will continue to operate H-Canyon. But we believe that along with our partners at NNSA we’ll have a full complement of nuclear materials activities in Fiscal ’16.”
The FY 2016 level for spent nuclear fuel stabilization and disposition at Savannah River, which covers some H-Canyon activities, is $34.4 million, down $8.7 million from current funding levels. The request also includes $234.6 million for nuclear materials stabilization and disposition, a cut of $12.2 million from current levels. “In Fiscal Year 2016 the nuclear materials budget presents a challenge to us. The Department is committed and NNSA and EM are actively working together to meet that challenge,” Moody said. “On one hand, NNSA is capturing proliferant materials worldwide and Savannah River Site is a key cog in that machinery, bringing those materials in and dispositioning them. So we are working with our partners in NNSA on how we will address the funding shortfalls.”
