Savannah River Site could produce 3.1 MT of HALEU as downblending plan okayed

On July 22, the DOE published an amended record of decision (ROD) for “Highly Enriched Uranium Blend Down to High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium at the Savannah River Site,” as well as a supplement analysis; both documents are dated April 2025. Together, they describe a plan to proceed with downblending HEU currently stored as uranyl nitrate liquid in the SRS H Canyon.

Work in progress: President Trump’s May 23 executive order on “Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security” called for the secretary of energy to, within 90 days, “identify all useful uranium and plutonium material within the Department of Energy’s inventories that may be recycled or processed into nuclear fuel for reactors in the United States” and to “release into a readily available fuel bank not less than 20 metric tons of high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for any project from the private sector which receives authorization to construct and operate at a Department of Energy–owned or controlled site and that is regulated by the Department of Energy for the purpose of powering AI and other infrastructure.”

The groundwork for the DOE’s plans to obtain a limited amount of HALEU from SRS downblending, as described in the recent ROD, has been underway for several years, as has the HALEU Availability Program, which saw four enrichment companies selected in October 2024 for future enrichment task orders.

The publication of the ROD and supplement analysis comes days after President Trump dismissed seven members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, leaving the NWTRB with just one member.

High-quality HALEU: About 3.1 MT of HALEU could be produced from 2.2 MT of HEU in the next two to four years, according to the ROD. That HALEU would then be transported by the DOE in liquid form to “an offsite commercial vendor” for fabrication into reactor fuel.

According to a July 22 statement from the Savannah River Operations Office, “The actions resulting from this amended decision would help alleviate the nation’s short-term need for HALEU until other commercial initiatives can begin production.”

The nation has limited stocks of HEU, and most of it is spoken for. The form that HEU is in dictates how easily (or not) it can be downblended and how the resultant HALEU can be used. According to the DOE’s analysis of downblending at H Canyon, “The resulting HALEU would meet reactor fuel production criteria limiting the amount of impurities (other elements and isotopes) in the fuel. Therefore, no further refinement of the HALEU would be required.”

What to do with the HEU: The 835-foot-long H Canyon nuclear chemical separations plant was built in the early 1950s and began operating in 1955. Historically, operators recovered uranium-235 and neptunium-237 from aluminum-clad enriched uranium fuel tubes from nuclear reactors on-site and other domestic and foreign research reactors, according to SRS.

Recent history has shown stops and starts in H Canyon activity:

• Between 2003 and 2011, about 14.9 MT of HEU was downblended in H Area facilities to produce 301 MT of 4.95 weight percent LEU that was fabricated into fuel for the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power reactor fleet, according to the newly amended ROD for HEU. The facility has not operated since 2011.
• In 2019, as interest in advanced reactors fueled by HALEU began to grow, so did concern about the availability of HALEU, and staff at SRS identified the HEU in H Canyon as one potential HALEU source.
• In April 2022, the DOE decided to process about 29.2 MT of spent nuclear fuel and target materials from the site’s L Basin “using conventional processing without recovery of uranium at the H Canyon facility.” The “accelerated basin de-inventory” work was to begin in 2022 and take about 12 to 13 years, with the resultant high-level waste stream heading to the Defense Waste Processing Facility for vitrification. Disposal without downblending, according to a 2022 ROD, would “strongly support U.S. non-proliferation policy and goals by permanently dispositioning the HEU contained in the [spent nuclear fuel]” and “is consistent with U.S. agreements regarding receipt of foreign research reactor materials in which involved countries with the economic ability to do so contribute to the costs of transportation and U.S. receipt, processing, and disposition of the materials.”
• A disposition path for the small amount of HEU still stored as liquid uranyl nitrate in H Canyon was earmarked for downblending to HALEU in March 2023, with downblending to begin in 2025.

Next steps: Now that an ROD has been released, based on the supplement analysis—which found that downblending effects were small and effectively bounded by an earlier environmental impact statement—no further National Environmental Policy Act documentation is required.

“DOE will continue to communicate and partner with local communities, stakeholders, industry, and regulators and is committed to complying with all appropriate and applicable environmental and regulatory requirements,” according to the Savannah River Site Operations Office.

The ROD describes plans to begin HALEU downblending of about 2.2 MT of HEU as uranyl nitrate liquid with natural uranium (also in uranyl nitrate liquid form) “as early as 2025 and continue approximately 2 to 4 years consistent with program and policy priorities, and funding.”

The supplement analysis and ROD have been posted on the DOE’s NEPA website, but at this writing the amended ROD has not yet been published in the Federal Register.