The U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management's process to speed up legacy nuclear waste removal at a site in South Carolina will improve the location's cleanup.
The newly approved approach to remove and process used fuel, Accelerated Basin De-inventory (ABD), is underway at the Savannah River site in Aiken, S.C., according to a July 5 DOE news release.
"The Department of Energy and its contractors are committed to reducing costs, completing projects more quickly and safely, optimizing operations and engaging employees in a highly effective production environment," Savannah River Site Manager Mike Budney said in the news release. "The ABD solution to improve the Savannah River Site cleanup mission embodies this approach."
DOE also announced the new approach on social media in a July 8 Twitter post, saying ABD "will accelerate the disposition of spent nuclear fuel" at the site "by more than 20 years & result in a savings of more than $4 billion dollars!"
ABD will allow spent nuclear fuel in the site's L Area Disassembly Basin, or "L Basin," storage area to be processed without removing highly enriched uranium and the resulting dissolved material can then be immobilized for disposal at a later date.
"There are so many reasons that ABD is a better path forward," Savannah River Nuclear Solutions ABD Program Manager Eloy Saldivar Jr. said in the news release. "L Basin is nearing its storage capacity, and there are other cheaper sources of fuel for commercial power reactors, so our [low enriched uranium] is no longer needed. ABD is just a cheaper, faster and simpler approach to dispositioning [spent nuclear fuel]."
ABD will allow for more than 3,000 spent nuclear fuel bundles in L Basin to be disposed of by the mid-2030s, compared the previous approach's estimate of 2060, the release reported.
