An appeals court’s October order for removal of 1 metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020, took effect Tuesday, depriving the Department of Energy of some legal wiggle room to contest the directive.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., gave notice that its October ruling was, as far as the three-judge panel is concerned, final. That limits the agency’s judicial options for fighting the order to either escalation to the Supreme Court or seeking redress from the U.S. District Court judge who issued the original order nearly a year ago.
Before the mandate, DOE could have sought a rehearing before the full 18-judge Fourth Circuit Court, rather than the three who heard the case in late September.
In 2016, South Carolina sued DOE in U.S. District Court for South Carolina for failing to remove the metrict ton of weapon-usable plutonium from the state by a legally binding deadline of Jan. 1, 2016.
In a progress report filed with the District Court last week, DOE said it was still on track to move that plutonium out of the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by Judge J. Michelle Childs’ 2020 deadline.
In May, DOE redesignated the to-be-removed ton, formerly surplus to defense needs, as for defense-production use. The cache of plutonium was in good enough condition, DOE said in last week’s filing, to be sent to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to help begin production of fissile weapon cores by early next decade.
As part of a 2000 arms control pact with Russia, DOE was supposed to turn 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium into commercial reactor fuel using the now-canceled, and still incomplete, Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility Savannah River. The Energy Department now plans to process the plutonium at Savannah River after 2027 and ship the resulting material for disposal at the agency’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
Shipping a ton of plutonium out of Savannah River by the District Court deadline will delay the start of that “dilute-and-dispose” approach by three to six months, DOE has said.
