Nevada on Friday asked a federal judge to bar the Department of Energy (DOE) from shipping 1 metric ton of plutonium to the state, potentially throwing a wrench in the agency’s plans to comply with an order from another federal judge to move the material out of South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020.
Nevada sued DOE in U.S. District Court for Nevada, asking District Judge Miranda Du and Magistrate Judge Carla Baldwin Carry for a preliminary injunction to enjoin the department “from shipping (or directing any other entity to ship) all or any part of the one metric ton (about 2,200 pounds) of plutonium … which is located in the State of South Carolina, in and through Nevada to the DOE’s Nevada Nuclear Security Site (NNSS).”
In a separate complaint, the state argued DOE should not be allowed to ship the plutonium to Nevada, either from South Carolina or a separate facility in Texas, until it is in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act and related regulations.
Last year, a federal judge in U.S. District Court for South Carolina ordered DOE to remove 1 metric ton of plutonium from the state by New Years’ Day 2020 after the agency failed to turn the material into commercial reactor fuel using the Savannah River Site’s now-canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
The Energy Department first said it would be impossible to move the material out of South Carolina so quickly. However, the agency subsequently hit on a solution: reclassifying 1 metric ton of the plutonium in South Carolina as “for defense-production use.”
Reclaiming the plutonium for weapons programs — the material wound up in South Carolina for disposal because it was previously declared surplus to U.S. defense needs — would allow DOE to fast-track the metal back to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to help produce new fissile warhead cores called plutonium pits.
However, because storage space in the nuclear security enterprise is limited, and because Los Alamos is not yet ready to begin pit production, DOE in July told the judge in South Carolina that the metric ton of non-pit plutonium would have to stop over in the Pantex Facility near Amarillo, Texas, and possibly also the Nevada National Security Site.
The Department of Energy had not responded to Nevada’s complaint at deadline Monday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
