Hanford Still In The Running For Plutonium Work Four Sites Considered For Turning Bomb Material Into Reactor Fuel, Storable Glass Logs

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is among four sites being considered by the U.S. Energy Department for turning surplus Cold War plutonium into storable glass and into fuel for commercial reactors, an official said Thursday.

At issue is disposal of about 50 metric tons of the bomb material, which is to be immobilized in glasslike logs - a process called vitrification - and ground up for use as reactor fuel.

Competing for portions of the work are Hanford in southeastern Washington; the Pantex nuclear-bomb plant near Amarillo, Texas; the Savannah River site in South Carolina; and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Final decisions on the $3 billion plutonium-disposal project are expected by the fall of 1998, said Jim Mecca, director of Hanford’s transition program, in Spokane to brief the Hanford Advisory Council on the plutonium-disposal issue.

Processing about 2.5 metric tons a year, the project would last about 20 years, Mecca said. A metric ton is 1,000 kilograms, or 2,205 pounds - slightly larger than the 2,000-pound short ton.

Last month, the Energy Department began a series of “scoping meetings” to review environmental studies of Hanford and the three other sites.

The department plans to encapsulate about 17 metric tons of plutonium residue from labs and former bomb-making facilities in glass logs that would be buried at a long-term disposal site.

An additional 33 metric tons, now in metal “pits” inside nuclear warheads, would be removed, ground up and mixed with uranium to make uranium-plutonium oxide fuel rods - known as mixed oxide fuel, or MOX - for commercial nuclear power plants. Reactor fuel now is made of uranium oxide only.

The four sites are vying for roles in three projects: taking apart the warhead pits, operating a nuclear fuel-manufacturing plant and operating an “immobilization” plant where wastes would be encapsulated in glass.

“We can do these processes at various locations,” Mecca said. “It’s a mix-and-match proposition.”

All four sites are eligible for factories to disassemble plutonium bomb pits and make MOX fuel. But only Savannah River and Hanford are possibilities for vitrification.

Each site has strengths and weaknesses, Mecca said.

For example, Hanford might be selected for the fuel-processing work because it has a large never-used plant built in the 1960s to make uranium-plutonium fuel for breeder reactors, he said.

Savannah River already has an operating vitrification plant, while the Texas plant already is in the business of disassembling nuclear warheads, Mecca said.

One other option under Energy Department consideration calls for taking no action on the plutonium.

Several thorny issues remain to be resolved before any plan is adopted, Mecca said.

First, there are nuclear nonproliferation treaties that prohibit reprocessing of weapons-grade plutonium.

And although plans call for encapsulated wastes and highly radioactive used fuel assemblies from power plants to be stored at Yucca Mountain, Nev., a final decision on permanent disposal still is years away, Mecca said.