AIKEN - The first step in a government program to convert weapons-grade uranium into electricity has begun at Savannah River Site.
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The process involves combining the excess uranium, which has been chemically enriched, with natural uranium to make low-enriched uranium fuel. The fuel will be used in Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear reactors.
"The blending down has started, and we're ready to load the first shipment," said Angeline Fitzgerald, a spokeswoman for Westinghouse Savannah River Co., the lead contractor for SRS.
The uranium program is similar to the more publicized mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel program at SRS. That effort will blend weapons-grade plutonium in oxide form with uranium oxide, but the MOX plant is still years away.
Even though the converted Tennessee Valley Authority reactors haven't begun burning the special uranium, the project already has won recognition from the Energy Department.
SRS received the Secretary's Excellence in Acquisition Award on Tuesday - one of only a handful issued in the past three years - for what the department described as "exceptional" results on the near-complete uranium project.
In order to get the uranium into its new form and ready for shipment, SRS built or modified buildings for purifying, blending and loading the material - doing the work under cost and within schedule, Ms. Fitzgerald said. She said the implications are far greater for taxpayers.
"It's less expensive than treating it in such a way that it can be disposed of as waste," she said.
She did not give specific figures of comparison.
Ms. Fitzgerald said it will take years before the government burns all the surplus weapons-grade uranium in its program.
Reach Eric Williamson at (803) 279-6895 or eric.williamson@augustachronicle.com.
