SAVANNAH RIVER SITE'S H-CANYON FACILITY: RECOVERY AND DOWN BLEND URANIUM FOR BENEFICIAL USE
For over fifty years, the H Canyon facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) has performed remotely operated radiochemical separations of irradiated targets to produce materials for national defense. Although the materials production mission has ended, the facility continues to play an important role in the stabilization and safe disposition of proliferable nuclear materials. As part of the US HEU Disposition Program, SRS has been down blending off-specification (off-spec) HEU to produce LEU since 2003. Off-spec HEU contains fission products not amenable to meeting the American Society for Testing and Material (ASTM) commercial fuel standards prior to purification. This down blended HEU material produced 301 MT of ~5% enriched LEU which has been fabricated into light water reactor fuel being utilized in Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) reactors in Tennessee and Alabama producing economic power. There is still in excess of ~10 MT of off-spec HEU throughout the DOE complex or future foreign and domestic research reactor returns that could be recovered and down blended for beneficial use as either ~5% enriched LEU, or for use in subsequent LEU reactors requiring ~19.75% enriched LEU fuel.
- Research Organization:
- SRS
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC09-08SR22470
- OSTI ID:
- 1082430
- Report Number(s):
- SRNL-MS-2013-00081
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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