GRANITEVILLE — Germany is about 18 months away from a decision on whether the country will send shipments of highly enriched uranium from the country to the Savannah River Site.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials still are deliberating if SRS would be the proper landing place for the processing of the material.
The news was shared by Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz during an interview with the Aiken Standard on Tuesday at Aiken Technical College.
If accepted, the highly enriched uranium, would come to SRS in the form of 1 million graphite spheres - each about the size of a tennis ball - containing highly enriched uranium from German research reactors.
Once at SRS, DOE would install in H Canyon a system capable of chemically removing the graphite from the fuel kernels using a technology being developed by Savannah River National Laboratory.
"(Tuesday), we spoke with one scientist who is leading the process development there. He indicated that they are probably 18 months away from a decision because there's still more process to go, some pilot activities to go," Moniz said.
In addition to the German material, Moniz reaffirmed that SRS is expected next fiscal year to accept more than 6,000 gallons of highly enriched uranium from Ontario, Canada.
The material would travel via truck to SRS. One proposed route is the Peace Bridge, an international bridge that connects the U.S. and Canada. The material would travel through western New York, and down to South Carolina on that route.
Finally, Moniz said Japan also is eager to ship weapons-grade plutonium from the country to the U.S., but SRS has not yet been chosen as a potential landing spot.
"We all hope that the material would start moving next year," he said. "We're just looking at what our options are."
Moniz covered several other issues during Tuesday's interview.
High priority on tank farms
Moniz said the Administration's commitment to cleaning up legacy waste in the site's Cold War-era waste tanks was put on display when it sought $70 million more for construction of a key facility.
Unlike other sites, SRS has a treatment path forward to address high-level waste, including a Saltstone facility where lower-level waste is turned into grout, and the current construction of a Salt Waste Processing Facility, which is scheduled for operation in 2018.
Moniz said SRS and the waste work at the Hanford site in Washington state are the two major projects on DOE's scope for environmental management.
"We try to put more resources in place to accelerate those projects," he said. "Liquid is what's mobile and it wasn't supposed to be there this long, so there's clearly some emergency to try and do it as fast as we can."
SRS has closed out four liquid waste tanks, with its eyes set on closing two more in the next year.
Last month, a final agreement was reached to extend the tank-closure deadline to May 31, 2016, for a Savannah River Site liquid-waste tank - an eight-month extension from the initial September deadline.
Emergency preparedness
Recent emergency preparedness and other incidents at the site have given DOE reason to focus more time on readiness and safety, said Moniz.
A federal safety board recently noted that significant shortfalls in emergency preparedness occurred during simulated drills to protect nuclear facility workers at the site.
In addition, Savannah River Remediation, the site's liquid waste contractor, in March, inadvertently transferred 6,600 gallons of high-level liquid tank waste into the incorrect tank because of degrading infrastructure.
These and related incidents have prompted SRS to ramp up their assessments and found that staff had to improve drills and execution.
Moniz said he does not foresee SRS suffering an incident similar to the one at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
The plant routinely received waste shipments from SRS and other Energy Department sites, but fire and radiation incidents in February 2014 halted shipments until further notice. Thirteen workers were treated for smoke inhalation during the fire; overall, 22 workers were exposed to radiation.
Moniz said he doesn't foresee a similar issue at SRS because of the lessons learned and the waste form.
"The WIPP waste is far less regular in its content; it's very heterogenous," he said. "It's so heterogenous that one batch of material became an issue."
MOX money, alternatives
Construction of the Savannah River Site's Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility is not the only project in the Department of Energy complex suffering from cost overruns or sequestration cuts, said Moniz.
He said it would take more than $1 billion a year to properly fund the nation's plutonium disposition program, which includes the Savannah River Site's MOX project.
Part of the reason, he added, is that MOX can only be funded at a minimal level due to sequestration cuts and restraints on the budget.
Another cost analysis of the MOX method for plutonium disposition, and alternatives to the method, are slated for release in September. If the nation does move on from MOX, Moniz said it may be able to repurpose some of the work already done - work that totals nearly $5 billion of the taxpayers' money.
"I think some will be for sure. A simple example is the storage building can be repurposed. And there may be some equipment that can reused," Moniz said.
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter with the Aiken Standard. He joined the paper in June 2013. He is originally from Vidalia, Ga., and a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.