A federal judge this week refused Nevada’s second request to legally block the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from shipping weapon-usable plutonium to the state from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
U.S. District Judge Miranda Du, in an order published late Monday, refused to grant an injunction, writing that the request was moot because the NNSA has said it does not plan to ship any more plutonium to Nevada.
Nevada sought a second injunction Feb. 6, asking Du for a shipping moratorium while a higher court considers the state’s appeal of Du’s first refusal to block shipments.
The NNSA sent half a metric ton of plutonium to the Silver State sometime before November 2018 to comply with an order from a different federal judge in South Carolina. Nevada sued the Department of Energy agency in U.S. District Court for Nevada on Nov. 30 to stop the shipment, unaware — the state has said — that the NNSA had already moved the material to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).
The shipment outraged Nevada’s congressional delegation and Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), who in protest this week skipped a Western Governors’ Association breakfast with President Donald Trump to protest. Nevada has said the agency cannot be trusted to refrain from more secret shipments.
The NNSA must remove 1 metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020 to comply with a December 2017 order in a different federal lawsuit, brought by South Carolina. The state sued after the agency failed to turn this previously surplus weapon-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel at the Savannah River Site.
The NNSA subsequently redesignated a metric ton of plutonium at Savannah River as “for defense-production use” and, around August 2018, announced plans to ship it to NNSS and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, for transfer to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico some time in the mid- to late-2020s.
