A federal judge had not ruled by early Friday afternoon whether the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) can ship a metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site.
Judge Miranda Du of the U.S. District Court for Nevada in Reno on Thursday heard arguments from attorneys representing the state of Nevada and the NNSA. In a Thursday minute order, she took the state’s Nov. 30 motion for a preliminary injunction under submission, meaning she will consider it alone and inform the parties of a decision later.
The plutonium at issue is now at the K-Area of the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The NNSA is under a judicial order from the U.S. District Court in South Carolina to move 1 metric ton of the material out of state by Jan. 1, 2020, after the agency failed to convert the material into commercial reactor fuel using Savannah River’s now-canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF).
South Carolina secured the order to remove the plutonium in 2017 as part of a separate lawsuit the state brought in 2016 in the District Court for South Carolina. Now, South Carolina seeks to block Du from giving Nevada the injunction the state wants. In January and December filings with the court in Nevada, South Carolina said an injunction would deprive the state of its hard-fought legal victory.
Nevada fears the NNSA could start moving plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site’s Device Assembly Facility from the Savannah River Site by the end of January, according to court papers filed in Reno late last year.
The NNSA has refused to comment on its timetable for moving the plutonium, citing security concerns.
One thing the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch has commented on, in response to a query from Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, is that the metric ton of plutonium set to leave South Carolina is not in the form of pits: fissile nuclear-weapon cores. An NNSA spokesperson confirmed Thursday the material soon to be on the move is not in pit form.
After the Monitor’s Monday query, the U.S. attorney arguing the government’s case on Tuesday retracted a statement in a Jan. 4 government filing that said the plutonium bound for Nevada is in pit form. The NNSA had previously told said this plutonium was not in pit form.
The plutonium the agency must ship out of Savannah River soon was one of 34 metric tons that was supposed to be turned into civilian reactor fuel in the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. NNSA terminated construction of the facility in October after spending $5 billion on the unfinished plant.
In May 2018, the agency reclassified one of those metric tons as for defense-production use and earmarked it for a one-way trip to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. There, the plutonium will be used as soon as 2024 to make pits suitable for future intercontinental ballistic missiles called the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. The material would stop off in Nevada because Los Alamos does not yet have space for the metal.
The 34 metric tons of plutonium was supposed to be de-weaponized forever, under a 2000 arms control pact with Russia. Both countries have since backed away from that agreement. The NNSA says it will still dispose of the 34 metric tons of material — using a proposed dilute-and-dispose method that would see the plutonium buried in the New Mexico desert — by substituting another tranche of surplus plutonium to make up for the ton being sent to Los Alamos.
Meanwhile, South Carolina is trying to get Nevada’s Nov. 30 lawsuit suit moved to the District Court in South Carolina.
In a motion filed Monday, ahead of the injunction hearing, South Carolina said Nevada could have filed its lawsuit in U.S. District Court for South Carolina, which “retains continuing jurisdiction” over the plutonium at issue and “has already ordered” the NNSA to adhere to federal environmental law when it ships the material from the Savannah River Site.
Nevada alleges the NNSA plans to move plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site without first completing a federally required environmental review. The NNSA says it has already done the environmental reviews required to store the material temporarily in Nevada and the Pantex weapons assembly and disassembly plant in Amarillo, Texas.
