SRS Milestone: EM Crews Remove Challenging Legacy Materials From Facility

The HB Line facility is located atop the H Canyon chemical separations facility at Savannah River Site.

Team transfers unique uranium materials, which had been produced at Y-12 National Security Complex, to Savannah River National Laboratory for use in developing cleanup plans

AIKEN, S.C. — As part of work to clear the last items from a facility once used to produce plutonium oxide at the Savannah River Site (SRS), U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management crews safely removed special legacy uranium materials that had been produced by the Y-12 Nation Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Removing such materials from HB Line — a process called de-inventorying — is occurring after workers placed the facility into a reversible safe shutdown in 2020. The shutdown preserved HB Line's capabilities for future use and saves about $40 million in taxpayer money each year.

“While most of the material has been de-inventoried from the HB Line facility, a small number of unique and hard-to-disposition items remain,” said HB Line Operations Manager Marty Ogden with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the site’s managing and operating contractor. “One group of these items was legacy uranium from the Y-12 uranium facility sent to SRS around 2008.”

Due to the unique makeup of the items and competing missions in HB Line, the material had been in safe storage in the facility since its arrival, Ogden added.

“Removal of the samples of the Y-12 legacy material completes one of the more challenging efforts associated with removal of the remaining items out of the facility,” Ogden said. “Now that this material is gone, we are much closer to a full de-inventory state. The team performed flawlessly to make the transfers safely and I want to thank them for their dedication, perseverance and hard work.”

The team transferred the materials to the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) for use in developing plans for the disposition of similar items at SRS. The complex transfer involved the creation of new training for employees and close coordination between SRNS and SRNL to ensure the safety of workers and the environment.

Located atop the H Canyon chemical separations facility, HB Line was formerly used to process plutonium and uranium materials for various historical missions, including the manufacture of power sources for deep space probes, such as the Cassini space research mission by NASA.

-Contributor: Lindsey MonBarren