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AIKEN, S.C. (April 22) -- According to a press release, the Department of Energys (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) began to accept radioactive salt waste solution at the Actinide Removal Process (ARP) and Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU) facilities, where the salt waste will be decontaminated, ushering in a new era of salt waste processing.

As the only commercial client who intended to buy MOX fuel from the $4.8 billion plant ends its contract, what will the ramifications be for the project and SRS? In December, Duke Energy let its contract to use the fuel in its reactors lapse. This leaves the multibillion dollar facility currently under construction without a customer. Duke Energy allowed its contract to buy the fuel expire Dec. 1, 2008, said Duke Energy spokesperson Rita Sipe. The mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility is a federal project to build a facility that would dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium and create mixed-oxide fuel, commonly called MOX, at the Savannah River Site. The facility is scheduled to open in 2016.

A workshop to discuss a proposed 2,700-acre energy park at Savannah River Site will be held next week and was scheduled after an environmental group's complaint that more public involvement was needed in the planning process. In a June 21 letter dated to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Friends of the Earth asked that the department halt development of an environmental assessment that could lead to the land's lease to the SRS Community Reuse Organization for an energy park. The group's primary concern is that the park could become another place that handles or processes nuclear waste, rather than a research center for alternative energy fuels, said Tom Clements, the group's Southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator.

The National Nuclear Security Administration recently announced that a team led by Baker Concrete Construction Inc. of Monroe, Ohio, has been awarded a $91.5 million contract for the construction of NNSA's Waste Solidification Building at the Savannah River Site. The Waste Solidification Building will process waste streams from the NNSA's plutonium disposition efforts at SRS - principally wastes from the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and from weapons pit disassembly operations - by converting them to a cement-like material for off-site disposal. "This announcement is an important step forward for our plutonium disposition program," said Ken Baker, principal assistant deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation. "The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and the supporting Waste Solidification Building are key elements in this important nonproliferation effort to eliminate surplus plutonium in a transparent and irreversible manner." The MOX program, a critical part of NNSA's nuclear nonproliferation efforts, will take at least 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-grade plutonium - enough material for about 8,500 nuclear weapons - and use it to create mixed-oxide fuel for use in nuclear power plants to generate electricity and render the plutonium unusable for nuclear weapons.

Congress was in session Friday at Savannah River Site. All four U.S. senators from South Carolina and Georgia were on hand for a tour of the nuclear power facility. "I think we're making history today," said Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "This is the first time all four senators from South Carolina and Georgia have been on site at the same time." Graham was joined by Jim DeMint, R-S.C., Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. All four senators left the facility impressed by what they saw, each praising the virtues of SRS. "It's a national treasure," Graham said. "It's so well built it can survive the visit of all of these senators."

Nuclear watchdog groups are proposing that the U.S. reduce its nuclear weapons complex to just three sites - not to include SRS - as a step toward the nuclear weapons-free world that President Barack Obama envisioned in a speech days ago in Prague. "We have a different declared direction ... (that) makes our recommendations a whole lot more possible than they were before" Obama's speech Sunday, said Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, one of the authors of the report released Wednesday by the Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network. The watchdog groups have a proposal that would cut nuclear weapons work down to essential operations while the nation works toward "a world free of nuclear weapons," Coghlan said in a telephone news conference.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced Tuesday that the Savannah River Site (SRS) will receive $1.615 billion in stimulus funds to accelerate decommissioning work and create as many as 3,000 jobs. "This is a tremendous opportunity for us to safely and efficiently create jobs," said Helen Belencan, Recovery Act project manager for DOE - Savannah River. "We have been given the public's trust to use the money wisely ... and with transparency." The projects will accelerate decommissioning of nuclear facilities and contaminated areas throughout the Site, including in-place decommissioning of two nuclear materials production reactors. Jobs financed with stimulus dollars are also aimed at early completion of clean-up programs and reducing the Site's protected area by 40 percent, or 79,000 acres, by September 2011.

"A plan to temporarily store two trainloads of Savannah River Site's depleted uranium in Texas after it was rejected by Utah's governor might be unnecessary and could waste taxpayers' money, according to the U.S. Energy Department's Inspector General. * Comment (1) * E-mail * Bookmark and Share Advertisement "The only apparent driver in this case was a Recovery Act-related goal established by the Department to accelerate the general disposition of the SRS material," said the report, released Tuesday as a "management alert" based on information received from a "reliable and credible" department source."

"Stimulus funding has moved the Department of Energy one step closer to closing the book on the Cold War-era P-Reactor facility at the Savannah River Site. With the installation, testing and startup of six evaporator units, SRS can begin removing about 4.6 million gallons of water from the 105-P Reactor Disassembly Basin - a phase of in-situ decommissioning. "The safe startup of the disassembly basin evaporators marks another milestone for this history-making Recovery Act project," said Ray Hannah, DOE federal project director of the P-Reactor Project. "Removing the water from the disassembly basin and readying it to be filled with grout are important steps in decommissioning this Cold-War relic." Six fuel oil-fired evaporators were installed in the Disassembly Basin's Transfer Bay and started up on April 7 to remove the basin water. An additional four evaporators will be installed in the Monitor Pin Room area of the basin and should be online in mid-May. "

Want to know what a top-secret truck moving "special nuclear materials" around the country looks like? Check out this photo, which comes from a blog at the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. The photo was released after a Freedom of Information Act request from an environmental group. "It's big and blue - and rumbling down an interstate near you. But if you were parked next to a nuclear warhead at the gas station, would you know it?" writes Chronicle reporter Robert Pavey. The Chronicle covers the Savannah River Site (SRS), a big-bomb producing facility back in the day, by which I mean the Cold War era. The Chronicle just published a series of stories on SRS's critical role in disposing of plutonium from about 10,000 dismantled bombs. So what does this top-secret transporting of nuclear materials have to do with New Mexico? Patience, patience.

Want to know what a top-secret truck moving "special nuclear materials" around the country looks like? Check out this photo, which comes from a blog at the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. The photo was released after a Freedom of Information Act request from an environmental group. "It's big and blue - and rumbling down an interstate near you. But if you were parked next to a nuclear warhead at the gas station, would you know it?" writes Chronicle reporter Robert Pavey. The Chronicle covers the Savannah River Site (SRS), a big-bomb producing facility back in the day, by which I mean the Cold War era. The Chronicle just published a series of stories on SRS's critical role in disposing of plutonium from about 10,000 dismantled bombs. So what does this top-secret transporting of nuclear materials have to do with New Mexico? Patience, patience.

"Radioactive waste was being readied for isolation plant A Savannah River Site worker is being evaluated for internal radioactive contamination after an accident in which his finger was punctured by waste materials. The incident occurred Monday in the site's F-Area, where employees hired by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions were conducting transuranic waste remediation work, said Jim Giusti, a U.S. Energy Department spokesman at the site. "His finger was punctured by something in the waste, and the waste is contaminated with radionuclides," he said. "It got into his skin and potentially into his blood. So we have a series of protocols we have to go through.""

Savannah River Site has been cleared to accept an additional 1.1 metric tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel from foreign research reactors under a program designed to prevent such material from falling into the hands of terrorists. The material -- containing enriched uranium -- would come from reactors in more than a dozen nations and could be shipped to SRS by rail or truck after being offloaded from ships at the Charleston, S.C., Naval Weapons Station, according to a notice published Friday in the Federal Register.

The National Nuclear Security Administration announced this week that they have approved the start of construction of a Waste Solidification Building at the Savannah River Site, as part of the MOX project. The WSB is one of three critical facilities that will allow for the disposal of surplus weapons-usable plutonium. "Beginning construction of the Waste Solidification Building is another clear indication that we are moving forward with our plans to dispose of at least 34 metric tons of surplus U.S. weapons plutonium," said William Tobey, NNSA deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation. The Waste Solidification Building will process liquid waste from the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility, currently under construction, and the planned Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF), scheduled to be completed in 2016.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has completed its final environmental impact statement for the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, Units 1 and 2, and concluded that there are no environmental impacts that would preclude license renewal for an additional 20 years of operation. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant units are pressurized water reactors, located about 26 miles southeast of Augusta, Ga. The current operating licenses for Units 1 and 2 expire Jan. 16, 2027 and Feb. 9, 2029 respectively. The operator, Southern Nuclear Operating Co., Inc. submitted an application for renewal of its licenses June 27, 2007. As part of its environmental review of the application, the NRC held public meetings near the plant to discuss the scope of the review and the draft version of the environmental impact statement. Comments were received and considered from members of the public, local officials, and representatives of state and federal agencies. Publication of the final environmental impact statement does not represent final NRC action on the license renewal application. The agency staff is completing its safety evaluation report, and the NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards will evaluate that report and make its recommendation before the agency makes a final decision. The Vogtle final environmental impact statement is available on the NRC's Web site at this address: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437/supplement34/ and can also be viewed in the NRC's ADAMS online documents system at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html by entering accession number "ML083380325" in the search window.

The second construction in the plutonium disposition complex at SRS broke ground Friday and was proclaimed "the cornerstone ... of a new nuclear age." Project workers and dignitaries spoke before the first shovels of dirt were turned over on the $345 million facility. Ken Chacey, director of site engineering and construction management for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the event was "a huge event for America" as a move toward energy independence. The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MOX) will turn weapons-grade plutonium into fuel assemblies in use in commercial nuclear reactors. The new facility is the Waste Solidification Building (WSB), which will process low-level and transuranic liquid waste streams from MOX and pit disassembly operations.

An additional investment of $6 billion over the next four years at SRS and other DOE cleanup sites could mean 10,000 new jobs. As part of President-elect Barack Obama's stimulus plan, billions of dollars could be funneled into the Department of Energy's cleanup program with a view to significantly accelerate the remaining work, according to an internal DOE document. "These footprint reduction efforts will lower monitoring and maintenance costs enabling (the office of Environmental Management) to focus on critical long-term activities like managing highly radioactive liquid tank waste," documents state. "They will also enable the leveraging of DOE/EM site assets to address national energy and environmental goals through the Energy Parks Initiatives."

With the last shipment leaving the Savannah River Site (SRS), all legacy solvents from canyon operations have left South Carolina for necessary treatment before final disposition, according to an announcement Friday. When F-Canyon shut down for the last time in 2003, clearing out its systems of all legacy chemicals was a major task. This included uranium-bearing materials, plutonium-bearing materials and 50,000 gallons of PUREX solvents. PUREX (Plutonium and Uranium Extraction) was the chemical process used.

The Senate Defense Authorization Bill that was passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee had better news than expected for the Savannah River Site. The portion of SRS funded through that part of the federal government was pegged to get an allocation next year of $1.28 billion which is $74 million more than was in President Bush's request for the Site.

Duke Energy, the only commercial nuclear power plant operator that had agreed to use mixed oxide fuels to be made at Savannah River Site, has ended its contract to use the material. The U.S. Department of Energy's $4.86 billion MOX facility at SRS, scheduled to open in 2016, is designed to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus, weapons-grade plutonium by using small amounts to make fuel for commercial reactors. The termination of Duke's contract -- disclosed Feb. 27 in a company financial filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission -- raises questions about the government's ability to find power plants willing to use the fuel, said Tom Clements, the Southeast nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued mid-cycle assessment letters to the nation's 104 operating commercial nuclear power plants. The agency's most recent assessments show that all plants continue to operate safely. "We ensure nuclear power plants are safe, inspecting them and rating their performance regularly, as part of our mission to protect people and the environment," said Bruce A. Boger, associate director for operating reactor oversight and licensing in the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. For this assessment period, all 104 plants are in the two highest performance categories. There are five levels of plant performance based on a detailed assessment of performance indicators (e.g. safety system availability and reliability, control of radiation exposure and unplanned shutdowns) and inspection findings. Levels range from "meeting all safety cornerstone objectives" (highest level) to "unacceptable performance" (lowest level). Additional information on the Reactor Oversight Process is available at : http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1649/r4/.