Page 9 - SRS Overview Book 2021
P. 9
H Canyon
SRS’ two primary separations facilities, called “canyons,” are located in F and
H Areas. F Canyon and H Canyon—together with FB Line and HB Line, which
are located atop the canyons—are where nuclear materials historically have
been chemically recovered and purified. F Canyon and FB Line have been
deactivated and await further disposition decisions.
An operator HB Line historically performed Pu oxide production.
(right)
in the H Canyon H Canyon is the only operating production-scale, nuclear chemical separations
(top) control
room facility in the U.S. The facility’s operations originally recovered uranium-235
and neptunium-237 from SNF rods from Site production reactors and from
domestic and foreign research reactor programs.
More recently, H Canyon has been processing SNF and, for the first time, is
running three different uranium streams. This supports environmental cleanup
and nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and a smaller, safer, more secure and
less expensive nuclear weapons complex. The SNF, which can be used in
nuclear weapons, is processed into low enriched uranium (LEU). LEU is not
desirable for weapons use and can be used to make fuel for the Tennessee
Valley Authority’s (TVA) commercial power reactors. Since March 2003, over
330 trailers of LEU have been shipped to TVA, providing enough LEU to power
all the homes in South Carolina for over 8.5 years or every home in the U.S.
(Clockwise from
left) A shipment for approximately 47 days.
of low enriched
uranium on its
way to TVA;
Pu-238; HB Line
an artist’s
rendering
of the Cassini HB Line, located on top of H Canyon, is the only chemical processing facility of
spacecraft its kind in the DOE complex.
HB Line has produced Pu-238 for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA). In 1995, SRS completed a five-year campaign to supply
Pu-238 for NASA’s Cassini mission. The unmanned expedition to Saturn was
launched Oct. 13, 1997, and arrived on July 1, 2004. Cassini’s missions
completed in 2018.
HB Line has been used more recently to make Pu oxide,
a non-weapons usable form of Pu, and is now in layup status.
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