The Department of Energy is appealing a federal court order that requires it to remove 1 metric ton of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium from the state of South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020.
The one-paragraph document, filed on Feb. 2 by DOE and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, is a response to the Dec. 20 ruling from Judge J. Michelle Childs, of U.S. District Court for South Carolina. It says the agencies are appealing “all orders and opinions merged into that judgment.”
The appeal will be considered at some point by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, located in Richmond, Va.
The appeal is the latest action in the first of three lawsuits in which South Carolina is seeking either money from the federal government or the removal of plutonium from DOE’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
The plutonium in question is covered by a 2000 U.S.-Russian deal that requires each nation to dispose of 34 metric tons of the nuclear weapon-usable material. The United States has planned to convert the plutonium into nuclear reactor fuel via the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site, though DOE in recent years has sought to cancel the project and instead process the material for disposal.
In 2003, DOE inked a separate deal with South Carolina in which it pledged that, beginning on Jan. 1, 2016, the federal government would pay up to $100 million a year if a ton of plutonium was not processed at the MFFF or removed from the state by that date. When payments did not begin in January 2016, South Carolina sued in U.S. District Court.
In February 2017, Childs ruled the monetary claim should be taken up in the Court of Federal Claims (CFC). South Carolina has since filed two lawsuits in CFC covering the money it says it is owed for 2016 and 2017, and is levying fines for 2018. As of Wednesday, South Carolina is seeking $238 million from the federal government.
While she sent the money issue to the Court of Federal Claims, Childs retained jurisdiction over the plutonium-removal issue at the heart of her ruling in December.
