Nuclear Science

The Fast Flux Test Facility, located at the Hanford Reservation in Washington state, is the Department of Energy's (DOE) newest and largest test and research reactor facility. In operation since 1982, the facility is designed primarily to test how well materials and components proposed for use in advanced reactors work in an operating test reactor. This fact sheet explores the rationale for DOE's 1990 decision to shut down the facility as well as DOE's response to proposals to keep the facility operating.

GAO found that: (1) because DOE was not been able to find a mission to pay nearly $90 million in FFTF annual operating costs, it planned to close FFTF in April 1992; (2) in order to give DOE more time to consider FFTF for possible future DOE missions, FFTF was put on nonoperating standby status, effective in April 1992; (3) DOE has examined and rejected a number of proposals for domestic and international utilization of FFTF because those proposals produced too little annual income to support FFTF, were too costly to initiate, were too low-priority for scarce funds, and were more viable at other DOE facilities; (4) DOE has been considering a proposal for FFTF to produce plutonium-238, a power source for electricity used during space missions, and expects to make its decision on production by the fall of 1992; (5) DOE has been considering FFTF as a possible option for the production of tritium, but believes that tritium might occupy all of FFTF and exclude other missions; and (6) it will cost DOE about $50 million to $60 million to keep FFTF on a nonoperating standby status, and DOE estimates that FFTF will not be restarted until at least 1996, since there is a sufficient inventory of plutonium and tritium to last the next several years.