AIKEN, S.C. - Savannah River Site (SRS) recently worked with EM’s Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to improve worker safety and realize savings by extending the life of shipping packages holding plutonium oxide.
Plutonium oxide is stored in SRNL-designed shipping packages called 9975s. Their physical attributes, primarily structural and thermal, provide safe storage of the material. SRS ensures these packages are secure and maintains their structural integrity until they’re shipped out of state for disposition.
“The shipping packages were due to reach the end of their design life, the period for which the packages were expected to function at their designated capacity, beginning in July 2017," said Jeff Jordan, SRS process engineering manager. “We knew we needed to work on extending the life of the packages to ensure the facility did not have to repack them."
Workers in the site’s surveillance program for the shipping packages open several 9975s each year to evaluate them for any signs of degradation. SRS engineers and SRNL used this data, results of SRNL aging studies, and extensive structural and thermal modeling to determine that the drums can last five more years before needing to be repackaged. With the insight gained from this evaluation, efforts are underway to increase the life of the shipping packages beyond 20 years.
Repacking the drums is costly and time consuming. Each drum repack requires significant effort from SRNL and SRS operations, radiological control, and engineering divisions. Extending the life of these drums lowers the potential for radiological exposure in personnel and results in annual operational cost savings.
“The robustness of our surveillance program is yet another way SRS shows that it is committed to safety," Jordan said. “We are being proactive in making sure the nuclear materials are stored in a safe manner."
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Environmental Management
