Advanced Recovery and Integrated Extraction System (ARIES): The United State's demonstration line for pit disassembly and conversion
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
The Advanced Recovery and Integrated Extraction System (ARIES) is a pit disassembly and conversion demonstration line at Los Alamos National Laboratory's plutonium facility. Pits are the core of a nuclear weapon that contains fissile material. With the end of the cold war, the United States began a program to dispose of the fissile material contained in surplus nuclear weapons. In January of 1997, the Department of Energy's Office of Fissile Material Disposition issued a Record of Decision (ROD) on the disposition of surplus plutonium. This decision contained a hybrid option for disposition of the plutonium, immobilization and mixed oxide fuel. ARIES is the cornerstone of the United States plutonium disposition program that supplies the pit demonstration plutonium feed material for either of these disposition pathways. Additionally, information from this demonstration is being used to design the United States Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility. AH of the ARIES technologies were recently developed and incorporate waste minimization. The technologies include pit bisection, hydride/dehydride, metal to oxide conversion process, packaging, and nondestructive assay (NDA). The current schedule for the ARIES integrated Demonstration will begin in the Spring of 1998. The ARIES project involves a number of DOE sites including Los Alamos National Laboratory as the lead laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and Sandia National Laboratories. Moreover, the ARIES team is heavily involved in working with Russia in their pit disassembly and conversion activities.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Defense Programs (DP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- OSTI ID:
- 1347
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR--98-1258; ON: DE00001347
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
ARIES pit disassembly-safeguards issues for transparency
Advanced Recovery and Integrated Extraction System (ARIES) Fiscal Year 1996 Annual Report