At the SRS Citizens Advisory Board meeting on September 22, a few details of the “operational closure” of many SRS site activities were revealed
Information Emerges on MOX-Related Plutonium Incident
The incident that caused the partial site shutdown occurred on September 3 and involved transfer in the HB-Line – sits atop the H-Canyon reprocessing plant – of 400 grams of weapon-grade plutonium from a single “3013” plutonium storage can into 3 sample cans.
Criticality control procedures were violated by personnel in how the cans were handled, resulting in not only closure of H-Canyon but many other site activities managed by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNL).
Plutonium removed from the 3013 cans (stored in K Aea) is being processed into plutonium oxide for the mismanaged MOX project though it is more likely that such purified plutonium will be discarded at much lower cost as nuclear waste. DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is paying DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), which operates H-Canyon, about $20 million/year for oxide production. NNSA must be getting a bit angry as only about 15+ kg of oxide have been prepared for them in 2014 and 2015.
While the HB-Line incident is being reviewed no timeline for finishing that review or restarting HB-Line for MOX plutonium oxide “feedstock” production were given.
There was also a presentation at the SRS CAB meeting on September 22 entitled “Update on H Area Operations” – linked here – but it didn’t contain much new information about the criticality incident on September 3, the second such criticality incident this year. To satisfy NNSA, which wouldn’t need the oxide (to be made into MOX fuel pellets) for another 15 years even if the MOX plant were to be finished and could somehow start operations, the goal is to put the HB-Line facility into 24/7 operation. But there is a long ways to go before that could happen.