HEU Measurements of Holdup and Recovered Residue in the Deactivation and Decommission Activities of the 321-M Reactor Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site

This paper contains a summary of the holdup and material control and accountability (MC&A) assays conducted for the determination of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in the deactivation and decommissioning (D&D) of Building 321-M at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The 321-M facility was the Reactor Fuel Fabrication Facility at SRS and was used to fabricate HEU fuel assemblies, lithium-aluminum target tubes, neptunium assemblies, and miscellaneous components for the SRS production reactors. The facility operated for 25 years. During this time thousands of uraniumaluminum- alloy (U-A1) production reactor fuel tubes were produced. After the facility ceased operations in 1995, all of the easily accessible U-Al was removed from the building, and only residual amounts remained. The bulk of this residue was located in the equipment that generated and handled small U-A1 particles and in the exhaust systems for this equipment (e.g., Chip compactor, casting furnaces, log saw, lathes A & B, cyclone separator, Freon™ cart, riser crusher, …etc). The D&D project is likely to represent an important example for D&D activities across SRS and across the Department of Energy weapons complex. SRTC was tasked to conduct holdup assays to quantify the amount of HED on all components removed from the facility prior to placing in solid waste containers. The 235U holdup in any single component of process equipment must not exceed 50 g in order to meet the container limit. This limit was imposed to meet criticality requirements of the low level solid waste storage vaults. Thus the holdup measurements were used as guidance to determine if further decontamination of equipment was needed to ensure that the quantity of 235U did not exceed the 50 g limit and to ensure that the waste met the Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) of the solid waste storage vaults. Since HEU is an accountable nuclear material, the holdup assays and assays of recovered residue were also important for material control and accountability purposes. In summary, the results of the holdup assays were essential for determining compliance with the Waste Acceptance Criteria, Material Control & Accountability, and to ensure that administrative criticality safety controls were not exceeded. This paper will discuss the ?-ray assay measurements conducted and the modeling of the acquired data to obtain measured holdup in process equipment, exhaust components, and fixed geometry scrap cans. It will also present development work required to model new acquisition configurations and to adapt available instrumentation to perform the assays.