In the latest move in the ongoing lawsuit over disposition of Department of Energy plutonium stored in South Carolina, the federal government submitted documents on Monday demonstrating its intention to advance downblending at the Savannah River Site and to send the processed material to the soon-to-be reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
South Carolina sued the Energy Department and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration on Feb. 9. it Is seeking $100 million and removal of 1 ton of plutonium due to DOE’s failure to meet a Jan. 1, 2016, deadline to process 1 metric ton of SRS plutonium through the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) or remove a ton from the state.
The lawsuit was filed on the same day that the Obama administration made clear in its fiscal 2017 budget request it intends to terminate the MOX project, which includes ongoing construction of the MFFF. The facility is intended to meet the terms of a 2000 bilateral agreement that requires the United States and Russia to each dispose of 34 metric tons of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. DOE now favors a downblending process it says would be much cheaper and faster, through which the plutonium would be diluted at SRS and then shipped to WIPP.
In a Sept. 15 filing, the state said that while WIPP is scheduled to reopen later this year following two accidents in February 2014, that doesn’t mean much if DOE still doesn’t know when the facility will be ready to accept more nuclear waste from other sites. South Carolina referenced an Aug. 4 notification from the DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, to a number of recipients. The notification says there are no currently scheduled shipments to WIPP from Aug. 31, 2016, to July 31, 2017.
But in an Oct. 3 response, the Energy Department reasserted that WIPP will restart operations this year. “It appears that South Carolina is suggesting that the Notification is inconsistent with statements Defendants have previously made to the Court,” lawyers representing the federal government wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs. “That is incorrect. As Defendants’ own filing acknowledges, the declaration submitted by [SRS plutonium program manager] Henry Allen Gunter states that ‘WIPP emplacement operations are currently planned to resume in late calendar year 2016.'”
The Energy Department also provided a copy of a Sept. 30 press release that notes the start of SRS downblending operations for 6 metric tons of plutonium. Though it is not part of the 34 metric tons covered by the U.S.-Russian agreement, the material would undergo the same downblending process that NNSA has proposed as an alternative to the MOX approach, according to the release.
Meanwhile, Russia announced Monday it is suspending its involvement in the plutonium disposition agreement with the U.S.
