The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is restarting HB-Line operations in order to recycle surplus plutonium and produce uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for advanced reactors.
DOE announced the restart in a Friday March 6 press release. It did not reveal a specific date for the restart driven by President Donald Trump’s May 2025 executive orders to revive the nuclear industrial base.
The facility near Aiken, S.C., is part of H-Canyon operations, which DOE calls the only chemical separations facility of its kind in the United States.
HB-Line started making plutonium-238 in 1985 for NASA’s deep space missions. The facility has not been used since 2018 and has been in a “managed layup” state since then, DOE said in the release.
“Restarting HB-Line is the right decision for taxpayers, for our national security and for America’s energy future,” said DOE Environmental Management Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh in the news release. “We are restoring a unique capability that will accelerate our mission, strengthen the domestic nuclear industrial base and deliver fuel the country needs to power advanced reactors.”
The restart decision is the first step in a multi-year restart plan. Once operational, HB-Line will accelerate EM’s plutonium disposition mission by 10 to 13 years while reducing the existing cost and saving American taxpayers up to $350 million, DOE said in the release. Restarting HB-Line also creates an opportunity to recover valuable isotopes now available in limited quantities domestically, supporting critical needs in scientific research and development, DOE said.