• New lease of life for US legacy nuclear sites The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a 310-square-mile (803-square-kilometre) site in Aiken, South Carolina, which was focused on the production of plutonium and tritium for use in the manufacture of nuclear weapons from the early 1950s until the end of the Cold War. • H Canyon - so named because the processing areas inside the building resemble a gorge in a deep valley between steeply vertical cliffs - began operations in 1955. • According to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (DOE EM), the facility historically recovered uranium and neptunium from fuel tubes used in nuclear reactors at SRS, to produce radioactive materials used in making nuclear weapons. • “H Canyon remains the only operating, production-scale, radiologically shielded chemical separations facility in the US, successfully operating and recovering uranium and other valuable materials from used nuclear fuel for more than 70 years,” DOE EM noted. • DOE EM has now announced that it is restarting uranium recovery operations at the H Canyon facility. • The decision to restart uranium recovery will produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) needed for advanced reactors, as well as recovering valuable isotopes currently available in limited domestic quantities, supporting critical needs in scientific research, medical applications and commercial uses.
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