December 10, 2015: Is fuel containing highly enriched uranium (HEU) at the UK’s Dounreay site in Scotland on the way to SRS? (see article linked below)
Why doesn’t the UK deal with its own nuclear materials and send it to the Sellafield nuclear site (as has been the plan by the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority)?! Transport by air is not authorized so it’s mere speculation that the material would be flown to SRS. Has other nuclear material been secretly flown from Scotland to SRS?
Is the material from a research reactor in the Republic of Georgia? See International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) blog, August 30, 2013:
“Transfer of Georgian HEU spent fuel from Dounreay to Savannah River Site”
Predictably, the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has “no comment at this time“…and still no comment as of December 17, 2015.
BBC article, 9 December 2015:
“SNP raises Dounreay ‘nuclear material’ concerns”
US NRC letter of February 6, 2015 – allowing shipment to US of the fuel listed below:
“This authorization is necessary to support a shipment from the Dounreay Nuclear Facility in Scotland to the Savannah River Site in the U.S. The package loading operations and the shipment schedule will be established by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Foreign Research Reactor program. In 2013, NAC requested a 1-year extension to the authorization period for this one-time shipment based on the fact that the shipments may not occur in 2013. NRC extended the authorization period to December 14, 2014. On November 25, 2014, NAC requested to extend the authorization period to December 2016, since the shipment did not occur in 2014. The applicant did not request changes to the request made on November 10, 2011.3 Therefore, the safety evaluation report issued on January 10, 2012, permitting a one-time shipment of five special fuel assemblies (i.e., Dounreay fuel contents) still applies.”
A one-time shipment of five (5) special fuel assemblies in the currently certified Model No. NAC-LWT transportation package specified as follows:
• Three (3) 4×4 square EK-10 rod arrays (two with 16 rods; one with 15 rods)
o UO2-Mg fuel matrix/Al clad
o Nominal 10 wt.% U-235
o < 120 g U-235 per array
o The maximum amount Uranium per assembly analyzed is 1400 g
o The maximum burnup analyzed is 20,000 MWd/MTU
o The minimum cooling time is 28.3 years
• One (1) concentric tube ITR assembly (four square tubes)
o U/Al alloy fuel/Al clad
o Similar to DIDO assembly currently authorized, but uses four square
“boxes” instead of cylindrical tubes
o Nominal 90 wt.% U-235
o < 170 g U-235 per assembly
o The maximum Uranium per assembly analyzed is 220 g
o The maximum burnup analyzed is 15,000
• One (1) hexagonal array (91 rods) TTR assembly
o U/Al alloy fuel/Al clad
o Nominal 90 wt.% U-235
o < 400 g U-235 per assembly
o The maximum Uranium per assembly analyzed is 500 g
o The maximum burnup analyzed is 60,000 MWd/MTU
o The minimum cooling time is 22.6 years
Article in The Herald (Scotland), 30 August 2013 on the shipment from Dounreay to SRS: “The Highland Line: should information around Dounreay have a hazard warning?”