The Department of Energy told a federal court Friday that rushing 1 metric ton of plutonium out of South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020, will delay the day it can move even more of the fissile material out of the state by three to six months.
Removing the plutonium from the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by that court-ordered date will tie up personnel and equipment at the site’s K-Area that otherwise could support work on the agency’s dilute-and-dispose plan: a strategy for eliminating 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium by the late 2040s.
As part of a lawsuit filed in 2016, a U.S. District Court judge in South Carolina last year ordered DOE to move a metric ton of plutonium out of state after the agency failed to convert the material into commercial reactor fuel using Savannah River’s canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF).
In a progress report filed with the court Friday, DOE said preparations for dilute-and-dispose “cannot occur simultaneously” with packing up of the ton of plutonium.
Congress forbade DOE from using its 2019 appropriation to build dilute-and-dispose infrastructure, but lawmakers did approve about $25 million for design studies as part of the budget for the Office of Material Management and Minimization within DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. The Energy Department had sought $59 million in dilute-and-dispose funding for 2019, including to begin procurement of glove boxe, and for demolition of unneeded K-Area infrastructure.
In its 2019 budget request, DOE estimated dilute-and-dispose infrastructure would take until 2027 to build, at a cost of $200 million to $500 million. It would take until the late 2040s to get all 34 metric tons of plutonium out of Savannah River, according to an internal DOE document obtained this year by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The Energy Department wants to turn the plant into a factory to produce fissile warhead cores called plutonium pits.
Meanwhile, Nevada has sued to keep the metric ton of plutonium out of the state on its way to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
