The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has less than a year to remove 1 metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium from South Carolina, and the agency will not rule out moving it before the end of January, according to a court filing the state of Nevada dropped just before the new year.
The Silver State shared the news Dec. 28 in a filing opposing the federal government’s request to indefinitely delay a Jan. 17 hearing that could decide whether the NNSA can send the fissile material to the Nevada National Security Site about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du denied the Energy Department agency’s request Wednesday.
Du set the Jan. 17 hearing date just before the Department of Justice lost its funding in the partial government shutdown that began Dec. 22. Before the shutdown, according to court documents, the U.S. attorney representing the NNSA in the case told a state lawyer that the federal agency would not ship any plutonium to Nevada before Jan. 21.
After the shutdown, the U.S. attorney requested that the hearing be stayed until the Justice Department gets a budget from Congress. That threw Nevada into a frenzy, with the state claiming that the NNSA — which, unlike Justice, is fully funded for the fiscal year that began in October — could start shipping plutonium from Savannah River before the state got a chance to secure a preliminary injunction.
Outside of court, Nevada told the NNSA it would agree to delay the hearing only if the agency promised not to ship any plutonium before Du heard arguments about the injunction. The NNSA, however, “would provide no such assurance,” according to an affidavit filed this week in the Nevada case by Marta Adams, the state’s special deputy attorney general.
The injunction is part of a lawsuit Nevada filed Nov. 30, alleging that the NNSA had not done the environmental diligence required to send plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site’s Device Assembly Facility.
Meanwhile, the state of South Carolina appeared this week in the Nevada court opposing an injunction that would stop the NNSA from moving plutonium out of Savannah River. Du scheduled a briefing on the state’s concerns for next week.
In Washington, the White House and Congress had not reached a budget deal at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
The NNSA did not respond to a request for comment, while the Nevada Attorney General’s Office deferred to the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.
In 2017, a federal judge in South Carolina ordered the NNSA to move the metric ton of plutonium out of the Savannah River Site by Jan. 1, 2020: a deadline agency officials still think they can make, according to a Dec. 14 filing with that court. The NNSA was supposed to turn the plutonium into commercial reactor fuel using Savannah River’s now-canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. When the agency failed to do that, federal law dictated the plutonium be moved out of the state.
The NNSA has refused to say publicly when it would begin shipping the metric ton of weapons-usable plutonium out of South Carolina. According to NNSA estimates in a progress report filed in June with the U.S. District Court for South Carolina, the ton of material could be packed up for shipment as soon as March.
Under the NNSA plan, the ton of plutonium from Savannah River would have a roughly five-year layover in Nevada before it is sent east to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to help make fissile warhead cores called pits. Los Alamos does not currently have room to store the plutonium.
The plutonium might also spend some time at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, the NNSA has said. It would take about 10 truck shipments to get the material out of South Carolina, according to an NNSA environmental review dated July 2018.
The ton of plutonium NNSA wants to divert from Savannah River and back into the weapons program is only the tip of the iceberg. The agency has a full 34 metric tons, excluding the weaponizable ton at issue in Nevada’s suit, to deal with. The material is supposed to be deweaponized as part of a bilateral arms control pact signed with Russia in 2010.
In the long term, the NNSA wants to chemically weaken the 34 metric tons of plutonium using planned equipment at Savannah River’s K-Area, blend the diluted material with concrete-like grout called stardust, and bury the resulting mixture deep underground at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
The NNSA maintains this mostly unfunded plan, called dilute-and-dispose, is the quickest way to get rid of the 34 metric tons of plutonium. The agency says it can bury all the plutonium covered under the accord with Russia by 2050 or so. About 10 tons of the plutonium covered by the agreement is stored at the Savannah River Site’s K-Area now, according to a state estimate filed with the U.S. District Court for South Carolina.
