As part of the work to clear the remaining items from the HB Line facility once used to produce plutonium oxide at the Savannah River Site (SRS), the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management crews have removed special legacy uranium materials that had been produced by the Y-12 Nation Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Removing such materials from HB Line – a process called de-inventorying – is occurring after workers placed the facility into a reversible safe shutdown in 2020. The shutdown preserved HB Line’s capabilities for future use and saves about $40m in taxpayer money each year, DOE said.
“While most of the material has been de-inventoried from the HB Line facility, a small number of unique and hard-to-disposition items remain,” said HB Line Operations Manager Marty Ogden with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the site’s managing and operating contractor. “One group of these items was legacy uranium from the Y-12 uranium facility sent to SRS around 2008.”
Due to the unique makeup of the items and competing missions in HB Line, the material had been in safe storage in the facility since its arrival, Ogden explained. “Removal of the samples of the Y-12 legacy material completes one of the more challenging efforts associated with removal of the remaining items out of the facility. Now that this material is gone, we are much closer to a full de-inventory state. The team performed flawlessly to make the transfers safely and I want to thank them for their dedication, perseverance and hard work.”
The team transferred the materials to the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) for use in developing plans for the disposition of similar items at SRS. The complex transfer involved the creation of new training for employees and close coordination between SRNS and SRNL to ensure the safety of workers and the environment.
Located atop the H Canyon chemical separations facility, HB Line was formerly used to process plutonium and uranium materials for various historical missions, including the manufacture of power sources for deep space probes, such as the Cassini space research mission by NASA.
The Savannah River Site, a 310-square-mile-site in Aiken, South Carolina, focused on the production of plutonium and tritium for use in the manufacture of nuclear weapons from its inception in the early 1950s until the end of the Cold War. In 1992, the focus at SRS turned to environmental cleanup, nuclear materials management, and research and development activities. The Y‑12 National Security Complex is a premier manufacturing facility that plays a key role in the DOE’s Nuclear Security Enterprise. Y‑12 helps ensure a safe and effective U.S. nuclear weapons deterrent. It also retrieves and stores nuclear materials.
