The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) last month began receiving liquid highly enriched uranium from Canada under a controversial program that will have the material traveling major U.S. highways on its way to South Carolina for the next few years.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) said in an April 21 site report that SRS’ H Canyon facility began processing “the first shipment of liquid Highly Enriched Uranium this week,” but did not cite the HEU’s point of origin. DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) confirmed Monday the material came from Canada, but said it could not discuss amounts or frequency of the shipments.
The first shipment was complicated upon arrival when an unanticipated “hotspot” was found on one side of a container that provides radiological shielding after the material is removed from the shipping cask. This indicated insufficient radiological shielding in the so-called “pig.” Radiological protection personnel “labeled the hotspot before H-Canyon personnel relocated the pig so the hotspot would be facing the wall,” according to the DNFSB report made public this week. No corresponding issues were found in other pigs.
The shipping cask was emptied and the HEU was being moved to H Canyon, where it will be converted into low-enriched uranium. After processing, the material will be sent to the Tennessee Valley Authority for use in nuclear power reactors.
HEU shipments from Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, to SRS near Aiken, S.C., are part of a 2010 agreement between then-U.S. President Barack Obama and then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Between 100 and 150 shipments will be needed to truck the 6,000 gallons of material, and DOE says it will take about three years to receive and process the material.
The HEU shipments have been a controversial issue for a number of years, drawing criticism from environmental groups that believe shipping the liquid material by truck is a high-risk venture. The truck route to SRS begins at the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. facility in Ontario, then goes over the Peace Bridge and through western New York on its way south to SRS. That’s a distance of more than 1,100 miles.
On a larger scale, the South Carolina Governor’s Office has consistently opposed bringing in more nuclear material into the state. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) met with White House staff last week in Washington, D.C., and briefly spoke about SRS, among other topics, said Brian Symmes, a spokesperson for the governor. Symmes couldn’t verify if McMaster specifically discussed his stance on nuclear materials. However, he said the governor “remains steadfast” about South Carolina not becoming a hot spot for nuclear waste.
Still, the issue is largely out of McMaster’s hands. SRS is a federal site and the materials shipped there are often based on international agreements between the U.S. and other countries. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) works with DOE to monitor nuclear waste already stored on site. But it is unclear if the agency has any regulatory power or involvement in decisions that send spent fuel to SRS. The state agency did not respond Thursday to a question about its involvement.
Controversy over the Canadian material came to a head in August 2016 when Beyond Nuclear, SRS Watch, and several other anti-nuclear groups filed a lawsuit, accusing the federal government of not taking necessary safety precautions before authorizing the shipments. The groups wanted DOE to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the shipments. But Judge Tanya Chutkan, of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on Feb. 2 ruled against requiring the department to produce the statement, stating that the department had fulfilled its safety obligation.
DOE conducted a supplemental analysis in 2013 and another one in 2015. Both concluded that the transport constitutes low risk because the HEU will be shipped in containers specifically designed and fabricated for holding liquid material.
