Improving the Scientific Basis for Managing DOE's Excess Nuclear Materials and Spent Nuclear Fuel (2003) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Challenges of Managing DOE's Excess Nuclear Materials
2 The Challenges of Managing DOE's Excess Nuclear Materials
Pages 16-27
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From page 16... ...
Some materials, for example, plutonium and spent nuclear fuels, present security concerns. DOE's strategy for managing these materials is to collect them at a few of its larger sites (Hanford, Washington; Savannah River, South Car~Civilian nuclear energy research by DOE and its predecessors created additional nuclear materials that are now in DOE's inventory, as did naval propulsion activities.
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From page 17... ...
The surplus includes clean metal from weapon disassembly and other sources, and impure metals, oxides, and other forms such as scraps and residues that were in process or stored when production operations ceased. The committee concluded that managing plutonium presents the greatest excess nuclear material challenge for DOE and that research should help sup2See Appendix A for a more detailed description of nuclear materials production in the DOE complex.
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1. The United States nuclear weapons complex included facilities that were constructed throughout the country.
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From page 19... ...
Nuclear Weapons Complex Chemical separation Uranium and plutonium is used to extract are further processed for plutonium from warhead triggers irradiated targets ~ Chapter 2 .....
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From page 20... ...
However, when the United States stopped its plutonium production, some 250 fuel types amounting to about 2,500 metric tons of heavy metals of spent nuclear fuel and targets were left unreprocessed. Most are stored at Hanford, Idaho, Savannah River, and Oak Ridge.
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From page 21... ...
The shutdown of the DOE's production reactors and separations facilities precludes the future, large-scale manufacture of these isotopes. As DOE continues to close not only its production facilities, but also other facilities capable of handling and storing these isotopes, the potential benefits of these unique materials may be lost.
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From page 23... ...
· Nuclear materials pose special problems and unique opportunities. For example, handling radioactive materials requires expensive facilities and trained personnel.
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Examples include selecting treatments for impure plutonium to preclude pressurization of storage containers (Chapter 3) and conditioning spent fuel to meet yet-to-be-developed repository acceptance criteria (Chapter 4~.
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An upper bound on the value of a given research project is quantified as the difference in the expected utility of the preferred alternative, with and without the uncertainty in the corresponding element of the decision analysis. This is called the "value of information" (see, for example, Clemen, 1 996~.
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From page 26... ...
... In other words, for purposes of the near term, one supplements a preliminary set of fundamental objectives with the proxy objective "to position ourselves better to address these same fundamental objectives later on." This includes fostering intellectual capital, fostering institutional capital, and developing an improved basis for evaluating alternatives or for formulating better ones in the first place.
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From page 27... ...
Maintaining the nuclear material resources in DOE's current inventory, as well as research investments to expand the knowledge base for their future beneficial application, were overarching considerations for the committee as it developed its research recommendations. Improvements in the knowledge base have downstream potential value that goes well beyond the current EM mission.
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