Enterprise SRS: Leveraging Ongoing Operations to Advance Nuclear Fuel Cycle Programs - 12579
- Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, SC 29802 (United States)
The international leadership in nuclear technology development and deployment long held by the United States has eroded due to the lack of clear national strategies for advanced reactor fuel cycle concepts and for nuclear materials management, as well as to the recent policy decision that halts work on the nuclear fuel repository at Yucca Mountain. Although no national consensus on strategy has yet been reached, a number of recent high-profile reviews and workshops have clearly highlighted a national need for robust research, development and deployment (RD and D) programs in key areas of nuclear technology, especially nuclear separations science and engineering. Collectively, these reviews and workshops provide a picture of the nuclear separations mission needs for three major program offices: Department of Energy Office of-Environmental Management), DOE Office of Nuclear Energy), and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). While the individual program needs differ significantly in detail and timing, they share common needs in two critical areas of RD and D: - The need for access to and use of multi-purpose engineering-scale demonstration test facilities that can support testing with radioactive material, and - The need for collaborative research enterprises that encompass government research organizations (i.e., national laboratories), commercial industry and the academic community. Such collaborative enterprises effectively integrate theory and modeling with the actual experimental work at all scales, as well as strengthen the technical foundation for research in critical areas. The arguments for engineering-scale collaborative research facilities are compelling. Processing history has shown that test programs and demonstrations conducted with actual nuclear materials are essential to program success. It is widely recognized, however, that such facilities are expensive to build and maintain; creating an imposing, if not prohibitive, financial burden on an individual sponsoring office. Given that reality, success for the current and future nuclear separations missions is dependent on a concerted effort to develop new, creative, approaches that leverage existing facilities in a manner that supports both near- and long-term needs of national programs. As a result of this situation, the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) organized the 'Nuclear Separations User Facility Strategy Session' in Washington, D.C. on July 29, 2011. This workshop brought together key stakeholders from DOE and the private sector to develop a strategy for using engineering-scale nuclear materials processing facilities to advance our nation's nuclear separations research needs. In particular, the meeting focused on recommending how these engineering-scale demonstration facilities, like the Savannah River Site H-Canyon, can be connected with smaller 'bench-scale' research activities to form a seamless approach that integrates across the continuum of RD and D of advanced separations technologies. Coming out of this workshop, a new vision has been developed for a collaborative research facility model that centers on H-Canyon. Unique to this approach is the fact that H-Canyon will continue to accomplish DOE's critical nuclear material processing missions, while simultaneously serving as an RD and D resource for the scientific and technical portions of the nuclear separations community. This paper describes the planned operations for H-Canyon in FY2012 and beyond and discusses how these operations fit within the context of a collaborative research facility model and support the ongoing fuel cycle research and development programs of the DOE. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, 1628 E. Southern Avenue, Suite 9-332, Tempe, AZ 85282 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22293758
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-14-WM-12579; TRN: US14V1414115282
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2012: Waste Management 2012 conference on improving the future in waste management, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 26 Feb - 1 Mar 2012; Other Information: Country of input: France; 6 refs.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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