Nuclear Materials Management
Nuclear Materials Management at the Savannah River Site includes used nuclear fuel (UNF) storage in the L Area Disassembly Basin; storage of plutonium and other special nuclear materials and plutonium downblend in the K Area Complex; and UNF processing in the H Canyon chemical separations facility.
H Canyon is the only operating, production-scale, radiologically-shielded chemical separations facility in the United States.
Plutonium downblend operations began in the Site’s K Area in 2016, to help accelerate the removal of plutonium from South Carolina. Since that time, K Area has undergone an Optimization process to introduce efficiencies that will help plutonium downblend be completed even faster. This culminated in K Area glovebox operations (where downblending occurs) moving to 4-shift operations in 2021.
The L Area Disassembly Basin receives fuel from both domestic and foreign research reactors. The fuel is unloaded and stored in the underwater basin until It is process in the H Canyon chemical separations facility.
A dissolver is lowered into the H Canyon Chemical Separations Facility. H Canyon began running two dissolvers in 2021 for the first time in a decade, in order to increase used nuclear fuel processing.