Savannah River Site Watch got the green light from Grammy Award winner Bonnie Raitt to lobby outside of her Oct. 28 concert in North Charleston, where the group collected signatures in opposition to bringing more nuclear materials to South Carolina. “Bonnie follows these nuclear waste issues and she’s very supportive of our work,” said SRS Watch Director Tom Clements.
Clements said about 90 attendees signed prewritten letters and added their own comments at the bottom of the page. The letters are being sent to Gov. Nikki Haley’s office in support of her stance against further shipments of nuclear waste to South Carolina, Clements said. When contacted about SRS Watch’s efforts, Haley spokeswoman Chaney Adams sent a statement she’s used multiple times: “Governor Haley has been clear: South Carolina will not become a permanent dumping ground for nuclear waste.”
Despite that declaration, SRS has received several shipments of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and weapon-usable plutonium through various international programs over the years. Under the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) and predecessor programs, for example, the U.S. has removed or eliminated more than 5,000 kilograms of HEU from various countries since 1994. Much of that material has been handled at SRS, though it is unclear how much.
In September 2015, the site received 1 kilogram of HEU from Jamaica and 2.2 kilograms from Switzerland. And in June, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that 331 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium from Japan had arrived at SRS.
Generally, when SRS receives foreign nuclear material, it is processed at the H Canyon facility and temporarily stored on-site until it can be shipped to a repository. In other cases, the material is repurposed and sent to other facilities where it can be used for fuel.
Clements said that, during Friday’s letter-signing, he spoke to people about the possible transfers to SRS of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Germany and Canada.
The 900 kilograms of German material would arrive in the form of 1 million graphite spheres, each about the size of a tennis ball. Germany in 2012 asked the Energy Department for assistance in disposing of the HEU, which dates to the 1950s. The HEU was produced in the U.S., which sent weapon-grade uranium to several other countries for research purposes through the Atoms for Peace program launched in 1953 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The material was used in German research reactors and is now considered spent fuel. Under the program, the U.S. is supposed to take it back, even though one option DOE is considering is to simply let the material remain in Germany.
A draft environmental assessment released in January 2016 found minimal risk in transporting the material from Germany to the United States. The full document was expected to be released in July but has not yet surfaced. If the project proceeds, the HEU would be processed into a less dangerous form at the Savannah River Site’s H Canyon, the only hardened chemical separations plant still in existence in the United States. The final product would be stored at SRS until the federal government secures a long-term repository for nuclear waste. The cost of the HEU transfer remains unclear, but Germany would pay for the full project, according to the draft EA.
The Canadian material, meanwhile, is wrapped up in a legal battle. Under the Atoms for Peace program, the material was used to produce molybdenum-99 for medical purposes at the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario. Shipments to SRS were expected to begin sometime this year. But on Aug. 12, multiple antinuclear groups filed a federal lawsuit alleging DOE and other parties failed to take the proper steps before the department authorized up to 150 shipments that total 6,000 gallons of HEU.
The groups are asking that shipments not start until DOE completes an environmental impact statement (EIS) that details the potential risks of moving the material. Under a Sept. 20 joint motion agreed to by the two sides, the HEU shipments are delayed to at least Feb. 17, 2017, so the court has sufficient time to “issue a decision prior to the date Defendants have determined the Canadian shipments must commence.”
If shipments are approved, the material would be processed at H Canyon and blended with natural uranium to produce low-enriched uranium (LEU). That material will then be transferred to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) where it will be converted into fuel for use in TVA reactors.
