Nuclear material from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s Fast Critical Assembly reactor has arrived to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Savannah River Site (SRS) and Y-12 National Security Complex, the NNSA announced Monday.
The shipment from Japan included highly enriched uranium that was sent to Y-12 in Tennessee to be eventually converted into low-enriched uranium reactor fuel, NNSA said.
The weapon-usable plutonium delivered to SRS will be downblended into an oxide suitable for later storage at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., according to an environmental assessment NNSA published Dec. 28.
Doing so will require construction of new facilities at SRS, including a new glove box for removing the protective overcoat, or clad, encapsulating some of the plutonium. The agency has not said how much the glove box and associated equipment will cost to build, but it did ask Congress for least $3 million for the effort in the White House’s fiscal 2017 budget request. The request for the glove box is buried in a $340-million budget line called Material Management and Minimization.
Japan will help pay for the glove box, according to the budget request, but NNSA has not disclosed the Japanese share of the cost.
The shipment of HEU and plutonium is covered under an agreement by President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to have the materials fully removed from the Fast Critical Assembly by this year.
SRS’ receipt of Japanese plutonium drew criticism from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is already fighting a legal battle with the Department of Energy over plutonium stored at the site. Following the NNSA’s Monday announcement, Haley knocked the Energy Department on Tuesday for bringing the material to her state.
Her comments follow a March 23 letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz demanding that he either stop the shipment or reroute it from coming to South Carolina. Though she reported reassurance on the issue after speaking with Moniz in early April, Haley said Tuesday that she is still not backing down. “South Carolina will not be a permanent dumping ground for nuclear waste,” she said.
But Haley’s stance comes amid longstanding plans for the SRS to receive more nuclear materials from across the globe for disposal using H Canyon and other SRS facilities. In March, the NNSA lauded the site’s acceptance of plutonium from Switzerland. In December, the agency reiterated its overall plans to bring about 900 kilograms of plutonium to SRS under the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which is intended to secure high-threat nuclear and radiological materials from across the world.
The NNSA determined in that same assessment that there would be no significant environmental impact in transporting up to 900 kilograms (1,984 pounds) of plutonium from other countries to SRS. The plutonium is expected to come from countries in Asia and Europe. In total, the site houses 13 metric tons of surplus plutonium.
Tom Clements, head of the SRS Watch citizens’ advocacy group, said the shipment to the U.S. included 331 kilograms of weapon-usable plutonium. Most of that, about 236 kilograms, originated in the U.K., but was most recently used for nuclear reactor testing at Japan’s Fast Critical Assembly at the Tokai Research and Development Center in Tokai Mura, Japan. Another 93 kilograms are of U.S. origin, and a final 3 kilograms are French, according to Clements.
Clements’ figures could not be independently verified by Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, but they line up with the figure cited by Greenpeace in a March 22 Reuters article.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Clements said one of two U.K.-flagged nuclear carriers docked June 4 at the Port of Charleston, while another had docked either June 4 or June 5 at the nearby Charleston Naval Complex.
Clements, who declined to reveal his sources for this information, said neither he nor any of his sources witnessed the ships docking, nor saw them docked.
The Port of Charleston, S.C., which lists recent arrivals and departures on its website, had no record of either the Pacific Egret or Pacific Heron putting in there. Both vessels are designated for nuclear fuel transport, according to multiple websites.
An NNSA spokesperson would not comment about the itinerary of either vessel.
However, a website that tracks ships based on the Automatic Identification Signal broadcast by most civilian marine vessels shows both were off the coast of Charleston on Monday.
As of 12 p.m. Eastern time that day, the Pacific Heron was about 50 miles off Charleston, east-bound for the port of Barrow-in-Furness in the United Kingdom. That is according to the vessel’s Automatic Identification Data signal, as tracked by the website MarineTraffic and accessed by Access Intelligence Tuesday.
Also on noon Monday, the Pacific Egret was about 30 miles off Charleston, bound for the Port of Falmouth in Cornwall, U.K.
Both the Egret and the Heron set sail from the port of Liverpool in the United Kingdom on Oct. 26. Witnesses in Japan saw the vessels loaded with plutonium in March, news outlets reported.
EDITOR’S NOTE: a previous version of this story gave the wrong post-Charleston destination for the Pacific Egret. June 28, 2016, 11:40 a.m.
