Nuclear Material Inventory Reduction Project at New Brunswick Laboratory

The US Department of Energy’s New Brunswick Laboratory (NBL) is a Government-Owed Government-Operated facility on the Argonne National Laboratory site. NBL was established in 1949 to provide the fledgling US nuclear program with analytical capabilities for nuclear materials. The facility currently includes a Hazard Category 3 storage facility for nuclear materials. Over the last 65 years, NBL has produced analytical standards and/or developed analysis methods for U, Pu, and Th. As a result, NBL has accumulated a legacy of nuclear materials in various forms, compositions, and sizes. NBL is in the initial stages of a multi-phase project to disposition this legacy material. Phase 1 of the project is planned to reduce the laboratory nuclear material inventory below Hazard Category 3 threshold levels in order to operate the facility as two segmented radiological facilities. Phase 1 will entail the transfer of approximately 2440 items to other facilities for storage or disposition. These items include 1600 U items comprised of various U oxides, metal, UF6, and high-enriched uranium (HEU) doped matrices such as graphite and cellulose. Approximately 300 Pu items, including metals, oxide, and sulfate, are also part of the Phase 1 project. In addition, the project will entail the transfer of mixed nuclear material such as HEU-Th beads, actinide bearing synthetic glasses, Am metal, and two pieces of Th metal with a total mass of 116 Kgs. The wide variety of nuclear materials and the current operational state of NBL combine to make the project particularly challenging. NBL has a small staff and is limited in material handling capabilities. Accordingly, all of the materials will have to be shipped in their existing primary containers and there is no capacity to alter the form of nuclear materials on site. NBL is currently coordinating with other facilities within the DOE complex to transfer the material to appropriate locations for long term storage of valuable nuclear reference materials and for disposition of those materials for which NBL has no defined use.