Local and state leaders in South Carolina told the new head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that the Savannah River Site would be the best place for plutonium pit production just before her visit to the Energy Department facility last week.
NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, who has been on the job since Feb. 22, on March 9 toured SRS, the 310-square-mile facility near Aiken, S.C. Beforehand, Gordon-Hagerty met with Aiken County Councilman Gary Bunker, Aiken City Mayor Rick Osbon, and state Sen. Tom Young, who represents Aiken.
During the nearly hourlong meeting, the Republican officials insisted the Savannah River Site is the best place for NNSA manufacturing of pits, the plutonium cores of nuclear warheads.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is the present home for the nation’s pit operations. The NNSA is evaluating its options for meeting the Defense Department’s need for 80 pits per year by 2030, and has acknowledged it could shift some production capacity to Savannah River.
Osbon said SRS has a dedicated and knowledgeable workforce that can handle the new mission.
“We certainly, as a community, would love to see this and other new missions come to the site,” he said in a telephone interview. “She’s aware that this is a community that is not afraid to step up and be a part of the nation’s security.”
In a follow-up letter to Gordon-Hagerty on Wednesday, Young lauded the SRS workforce and the site’s collaboration with local high schools and colleges to increase interest in the nuclear job market.
“Our community and the two state region is united in support for locating all or a portion of the expansion of the nation’s Plutonium Pit Production at Savannah River Site,” he wrote. “We are supportive of the pit mission at SRS and hope you will decide this is the best place from a workforce, facility and community standpoint.”
The meeting with Gordon-Hagerty was just the latest opportunity for locals to demonstrate backing for SRS claiming some of the pit work. The three municipalities within 20 miles of the facility – the city of North Augusta, the City of Aiken, and Aiken County – have all recently approved resolutions in support of the project.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s Nuclear Advisory Council has also been an advocate. However, the council has one problem with the potential plan: If the project were to come to SRS, the NNSA might repurpose the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) to carry out the pit work.
The MFFF is being built to convert 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel under a 2000 nonproliferation agreement with Russia. Originally expected to cost $17 billion, the Energy Department believes the facility will now cost $51 billion over its lifetime, including $5 billion already spent. The department wants to terminate MOX and move forward with an alternative to dilute the plutonium at SRS and store it at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, N.M.
Locals near Savannah River have also said they don’t want to get rid of the MFFF, but instead want to see both projects at Savannah River.
Osbon said the officials didn’t delve into details about the MOX facility during Gordon-Hagerty’s visit. “I think it’s an issue Congress would have to speak to,” he said. “Our focus was to share some thoughts and build on the community’s relationship with the NNSA.”
New Mexico leaders have not been sitting still while their counterparts in South Carolina broach the potential to poach some of the pit work. Three members of the New Mexico congressional delegation – Sen. Martin Heinrich (D), Sen. Tom Udall (D), and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D) — said in late 2017 that internal DOE documents showed significant flaws in the analysis of the cost savings achieved by moving pit production to South Carolina.
