The Anderson County Board of Commissioners has scheduled a workshop for Monday, January 7, 2019, starting at 6 p.m. to discuss the U.S. Department of Energy construction and operation of a new disposal facility. The workshop will be held in room 312 in the Anderson County Courthouse at 100 North Main Street in Clinton, Tennessee.
Twenty tons of uranium could be used to produce tritium for nuclear weapons
Image courtesy National Nuclear Security Administration. SRS is the Savannah River Site.
About 20 metric tons of highly enriched uranium could be “down-blended” to low-enriched uranium and transferred to the Tennessee Valley Authority for use as a fuel to produce tritium for nuclear weapons, according to a public notice published in the Federal Register this week.
The project involves the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge and Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City in Rhea County, among other sites.
The National Nuclear Security Administration and TVA announced in August that they intend to enter into an agreement to “down-blend” highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium in order to help produce tritium, a key “boosting” component in nuclear weapons.
The highly enriched uranium used for the “down-blending” will be processed, packaged, and shipped from Y-12, according to the NNSA. Y-12 is an NNSA site, and it is the main storage facility for certain categories of highly enriched uranium. [Read more…]
