The Savannah River Site’s potential acceptance of German spent nuclear fuel faced another discussion and vote on Tuesday. The Nuclear Materials Committee of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) decided the issue should go before the full CAB later this month, with five members in favor of the move, three in opposition, and one abstention.
The material in question is 900 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Germany. The debate on the issue dates to 2012 when Germany contacted the Energy Department for help in disposing of the material. The CAB has no authority in the matter, but approval of a position paper opposing the shipment would represent the opinion of many community members who have denounced the arrival of more nuclear materials to the South Carolina facility in recent years. The community overall remains divided on the issue, with others voicing their approval of SRS accepting the material.
Germany provided $10 million to fund Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) research on the best way to handle the material, which is stored in 1 million graphite spheres – each about the size of a tennis ball. SRNL developed a technology to remove the graphite to try and get to the HEU fuel kernels inside each of the balls so the material can be dispositioned on site. The department reported in February that researchers were still working on the technology.
But the position paper drafted by the CAB committee says SRS should refrain from taking the German fuel. The paper points out that the Energy Department has previously said the German HEU is not a proliferation concern. “Therefore, bringing it to the US for safeguarding is unnecessary,” the committee wrote in the paper. The paper says Germany is a “first-world ally capable of safely and securely managing this SNF without US assistance,” and that bringing the material to SRS would result in the site storing more unwanted nuclear materials.
Committee member Gil Allensworth was one of the nay votes and said he disagrees with the notion that SRS shouldn’t accept the German material. The HEU was first produced in the U.S., which sent the material to several other countries for research purposes through the Atoms for Peace program launched in 1953 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Under the program, the U.S. is obligated to take it back, and the Savannah River Site is the only facility that has been considered for accepting the material.
Allensworth also drafted a recommendation that seeks more information on the German material and the origin of the Atoms for Peace agreement to determine the necessity for the U.S. to retrieve the HEU. Until more is known, he doesn’t want to vote in favor of stopping the material from coming to SRS. His position paper was also approved on Tuesday. “America should honor its commitments and accept the material back if it’s safe for travel and makes sense for us to,” Allensworth said. The full CAB is expected to take up each of the issues during its next meeting on July 25-26.
DOE has not decided whether to accept the material. A draft DOE environmental assessment (EA), released in January, found there is minimal risk in doing so. The document addresses the potential impacts from 30 shipments of spent nuclear fuel to Joint Base Charleston, near Charleston, S.C., over a 3.5-year span, with each shipment transporting eight to 16 casks secured in regulation shipping containers. The document says there would be minimal nonradiological impacts and minimal effects from discharges of liquid effluents to ocean waters during travels across the Atlantic. The full EA remains in internal DOE review with no specific release date at this time.
If the project proceeds, the German government would work with DOE to transport the material in chartered ships across the Atlantic Ocean to the Charleston base, according to the draft EA. The material would then travel by train to SRS in accordance with U.S. regulatory requirements. Once on site, the HEU would be processed and dispositioned into a less dangerous form at the H Canyon facility, the only hardened chemical separations plant still in existence in the United States.
