The National Nuclear Security Administration plans a somewhat expedited environmental review of its plan to convert a partially built plutonium recycling plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., into a plutonium pit factory, according to an “unpublished” decision posted online Tuesday.
The agency has studied since June whether it must complete a brand new environmental impact statement about its plan to annually produce 80 pits — fissile nuclear-weapon cores — by 2030. The plan, unveiled in 2018, includes converting the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., into a pit plant.
According to the decision that appeared online Tuesday morning, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) believes it does not have to review every aspect of this plan, writing that “no further NEPA [National Environmental Protection Act] documentation at a programmatic level is required.”
That could shorten somewhat the agency’s ambitious timeline to hit its 80-pits-a year goal by the start of next decade, using the converted MFFF, and an upgraded PF-4 Plutonium Facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Environmental groups that oppose the NNSA’s pit plan, on the grounds that the agency could simply reuse old pits when it refurbishes weapons, want the semi autonomous Department of Energy weapons steward to complete a brand new environmental impact statement for the split-state pit complex. Besides the planned factories at Los Alamos and Savannah River, the review would have to consider the potential effects of transporting plutonium to and from those sites.
The NNSA, which says existing pits are too old to be placed in weapons that must remain war-ready throughout the second half of this century, has said it could supplement existing environmental reviews instead of writing a brand new one for the planned mission. Previous reviews have touched on some aspects of the expanded pit complex the agency plans, the NNSA has said.
Supplementing existing documentation could be quicker than writing a new environmental impact statement for the entire program.
For example, the NNSA said Tuesday it could supplement a 2008 Site-wise Environmental Impact Statement on Los Alamos with a new new study on the current plan to make at least 30 pits annually at the lab. The results of that study would appear as a site-specific supplement analysis to the 2008 document.
The NNSA could also write a new site-specific environmental impact statement covering MFFF, including conversion to a pit plant and production of at least 50 pits a year there. That review would be limited to potential effects at the Savannah River Site.
In any case, the NNSA has admitted it will be “challenged” to make 80 pits a year by 2030. Internal studies funded by the agency, and which later became public, concluded that NNSA might not hit its targeted pit throughput until the early 2030s at least. The agency has since said that it can still make the 2030 date.
Editor’s note: 01/08/2020, 1:01 p.m. Eastern: the story was updated with details about future environmental reviews the NNSA could conduct about planned pit production at Los Alamos and Savannah River, and corrected to specify that the agency could do an environmental impact statement about converting the MFFF for pit duty.
