Design plans for pit production, MOX conversion submitted to Energy Department

• By Colin Demarest cdemarest@aikenstandard.com
• March 8, 2021

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions has submitted to the National Nuclear Security Administration conceptual plans to craft plutonium pits at the Savannah River Site, checking another box on the federal government’s often-arcane project to-do list.

The hefty submission brings plutonium pit production – the forging of nuclear weapon cores – at the reservation south of Aiken one step closer to fruition but certainly does not guarantee it. Many more hurdles need clearing.

The design packet was transmitted early this year, according to Dave Olson, the executive vice president for NNSA capital projects at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions. As proposed, pit production at SRS would mean significantly reworking the failed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, a multibillion-dollar nuclear fuel plant.

“Part of what we delivered to” the Department of Energy “in January was 4,500 documents, tens of thousands of pages of information for them to review and make a decision,” Olson said March 5, “along with a cost estimate and schedule for us to start doing the pit production.”

The National Nuclear Security Administration has received Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ bundle. According to Olson, it’s bound for “a multi-month review and approval process that says we either accept it or we don’t, or if we accept it, here’s how we’d like you to” proceed “to finish the design, start into buying equipment and construction.”

A decision could be made within months, Olson noted at the First Friday breakfast put on by the Aiken Chamber of Commerce. But the timeline is hazy. And a new administration, Biden’s, could pose new questions.

ederal law mandates the production of 80 pits per year by 2030 – a serious challenge, as time is short, congressional support is crucial and the U.S. has for awhile lacked the means to craft the key warhead components. (An independent evaluation in 2019 found achieving 80 pits per year by 2030 nearly impossible.)

To satisfy the demand for pits, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Defense in May 2018, under Trump’s watch, recommended jumpstarting production at two storied complexes: the Savannah River Site, near New Ellenton and Jackson, and Los Alamos National Lab, near Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

At the Savannah River Site, they jointly suggested, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility would be renovated. We “put together conceptual design for how to refurbish that building to make plutonium pits,” Olson said last week.

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the top contractor at the site, already filed its plans concerning the transition and turnover of MOX.

The potential pit factory at SRS has been dubbed the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility. The National Nuclear Security Administration in a November 2020 notice confirmed its pursuit of the facility, often shortened to SRPPF.