A federal judge is giving the Energy Department and South Carolina about another week to explain why a lawsuit over DOE’s failure to move plutonium out of the state should — or shouldn’t — be transferred to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, according to court papers filed Monday.
The parties, in court since February after South Carolina sued DOE for breach of a 2003 agreement the state says obliged the agency to either process or remove 1 metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2016, now have until Dec. 5 to file replies to an Oct. 31 ruling from Judge Michelle Childs of the U.S. District Court for the Aiken district of South Carolina.
In the ruling, Childs declined to dismiss the case as DOE wished, but directed the agency and the state to reply to the motion with arguments for or against a change of venue. She gave the parties until Nov. 30 to file supplemental briefs, but extended the due date at South Carolina’s request.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson seeks $100 million in damages for the alleged breach of the cleanup agreement. South Carolina also wants DOE to move the plutonium, currently stored at DOE’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., out of state.
DOE wanted Childs to dismiss the case. The agency has argued the Court of Federal Claims is the proper venue.
The plutonium at issue was declared excess to U.S. nuclear weapons needs and was to be reprocessed into fuel for commercial reactors using the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) under construction at Savannah River.
MFFF is also supposed to reprocess a separate, 34 metric-ton tranche of plutonium covered by a 2000 nuclear disarmament agreement with Russia that is now in limbo following the Kremlin’s decision this fall to suspend the deal. The Obama administration wants to cancel the plant and dispose of excess plutonium underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, or some future facility like it.
