Year
2013
Abstract
The Department of Energy (DOE) manages an inventory of materials that contains a range of long- lived radioactive isotopes that were produced from the 1960s through the 1980s by irradiating targets in production reactors at the Savannah River Site (SRS) to produce special heavy isotopes for DOE programmatic use, scientific research, and industrial and medical applications. During the late 1960s, one of the production reactors was configured to operate in a very high-flux mode, and >8 kg of Pu-242 contained in Mark-18A (Mk-18A) targets were irradiated to produce Cf-252 for use in neutron source applications. Several targets were processed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to recover the Cf-252, heavy curium (i.e., curium rich in Cm-246 through Cm-248), and Pu-244. Sixty- five of the Mk-18A targets were not processed and are currently in wet storage at SRS. DOE’s Office of Nuclear Materials Integration has tasked ORNL and Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to evaluate disposition options for these materials. Their management involves processing items for beneficial use and/or for disposition using storage and process facilities at SRS and ORNL. The objective of the study was to identify feasible disposition options, develop preliminary cost estimates for viable options, evaluate each option versus programmatic needs, and recommend recovery or dispositioning options for each material. The evaluation methodology and results of the options study for the stored Mk-18A materials are reported.