The metric ton of plutonium South Carolina took the Department of Energy to court over in 2016 is unlikely to leave the state for years, but the agency is seeking more money from Congress to make a move happen sooner, according to its latest budget proposal.
In its detailed 2019 budget request issued last week, the agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) asked Congress for a combined $129 million — split not quite evenly between personnel and hardware procurements — to speed up a plutonium-disposal effort the agency has wanted to start for years, but which lawmakers have yet to authorize or fund.
The requested funding will help “expedite the removal of 1MT [metric ton] of plutonium” from the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., the NNSA said in the request. The agency started sending excess weapons plutonium to the site from other NNSA facilities in the early 2000s.
For fiscal 2019, the NNSA asked Congress to add $70 million to a relatively small defense nuclear nonproliferation subprogram called Material Disposition. The increase would pay for “hiring, training and appropriate clearance qualifications of additional employees” who could help dilute the plutonium already in South Carolina, and support a larger dilute-and-dispose program in the future, the agency said in the request.
The NNSA is seeking about $200 million for Material Disposition overall: some 40 percent more than the 2017 appropriations that has essentially carried over into 2018 under a series of temporary budget bills called continuing resolutions. The subprogram’s proposed 2019 funding level would represent about a tenth of the NNSA’s defense nuclear nonproliferation account.
Meanwhile, the NNSA also requested $59 million to fund “preliminary design and the initiation of long-lead procurements” for the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Project: physical upgrades that would allow larger-scale downblending at SRS’ K-Area Congress has so far been unwilling to fund. Proposed upgrades for fiscal 2019 include “plutonium processing gloveboxes and specialized engineered electrical control,” the NNSA said. That is a massive increase from the $9 million in study money Congress approved for dilute-and-dispose in 2017.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson did not reply to a request for comment this week about whether he thought the NNSA’s proposal for 2019 would expedite the removal of plutonium from the state.
In its latest budget request, the agency estimated it could close down MFFF by 2021.
South Carolina sued the DOE branch in federal court after the agency blew a Jan. 1, 2016, deadline to remove a metric ton of weapon-grade plutonium from the state, or convert it to commercial reactor fuel using the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) CB&I AREVA MOX Services is building at Savannah River. The NNSA has asked Congress to cancel the facility for three years in a row in favor of the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Project. Congress has refused.
MOX Services, meanwhile, has sued the NNSA for mismanaging the MFFF contract. The company seeks $200 million in damages.
