Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposition at the Savannah River Site

For over forty years, the H-Canyon facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) performed remotely operated radiochemical separations of irradiated targets and fuels 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. H-Canyon has operated for over sixty years and provides the capability to process various types of radioactive materials in a safe, environmentally acceptable manner. The canyon was designed to remotely handle material with the highest potential for radiation exposure, and to do remote maintenance. Equipment can also be remotely inserted, modified in place and removed if necessary, with low radiation exposure to the operators. These facilities have capabilities that are unique in the U.S. and rare in the world. Their replacements would cost tens of billions of dollars and would require sustained construction funding over many government budget cycles. H-Canyon continues to disposition excess uranium and plutonium-bearing materials as well as assist with nuclear research/development. The main H-Canyon mission is to process spent nuclear fuel (SNF) currently stored in the SRS L-area “wet” basin. Research and development activities utilizing these facilities during these processes have also been approved. An Amended Record of Decision (AROD) was approved in April 2013 allowing conventional chemical separations processing of approximately 1,000 aluminum clad fuel bundles and up to 200 High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) cores through SRS’s H-Canyon. Allowing this chemical separations processing, will disposition this uranium material for a useful purpose and alleviate the potential need to increase SNF storage capacity at SRS L Basin.