Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
2/5/2016
U.S. Republicans and Democrats both support the call for an updated assessment of potential threats before shipments of liquid highly enriched uranium from Canada cross international borders and travel to the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. But the Department of Energy has not budged from its stance that existing studies show the material can travel safely.
On Jan. 7, U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins (D–N.Y.) continued his efforts to get the Department of Energy to conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS). The statement would evaluate the more than 6,000 gallons of uranium that would relocate from the Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario to SRS, where workers will reprocess the material at the H Canyon facility and dispose of the final solution. DOE said in December that the material will most likely arrive at SRS this summer.
Higgins said last month on the U.S. House floor that the department plans up to 150 shipments without a current EIS. The shipments would go over the Peace Bridge and through western New York on their way south to South Carolina. The route was approved 20 years ago and was a bad idea then, Higgins said. The lawmaker introduced legislation last year seeking another assessment of potential threats posed by the shipments. Specifically, his bill would require the Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, and other agencies to conduct a terrorism threat assessment before shipping the uranium to SRS.
The House passed the bill in June with a vote of 416-0. That vote included approval from U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R–S.C.) who said he "appreciates the steps Rep. Brian Higgins has taken to ensure the hazardous materials are not vulnerable to terrorist attacks while being transported." The Senate has not taken up the bill. Higgins said on the House floor that DOE is ignoring the "clear will of this House" by moving forward with plans to ship the material to SRS.
The Department of Energy continued playing down the need for another EIS in a supplement analysis released in December. The supplement analysis determined that proposed changes in methods, such as distributing the material among multiple DOE sites, and any recent information related to potential impacts that could result from transporting the material would not be significantly different from the impacts reported in previous years. The material will be shipped in sturdy containers specifically designed and fabricated for transporting liquid highly enriched uranium, said DOE spokesman Jim Giusti.
