Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
7/11/2014
Opposition is growing in South Carolina to the Department of Energy’s proposal to bring 900 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from Germany to the Savannah River Site for processing. This month local media in the Savannah River area ran editorials against the plan, and the proposal has become a campaign issue in the election for South Carolina governor scheduled this fall. “It’s not right for South Carolina to bear that burden,” Democratic candidate Vincent Sheheen (D), the major challenger to incumbent Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said this week, according to media reports. “Let me be clear, South Carolina is not a nuclear waste dump. We will not allow our governor to stand by idly. We will not allow this state’s voice not to be heard.”
The U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium comes in the form of graphite spheres from the pebble bed AVR gas-cooled research reactor at the Juelich Research Center in Germany, and could be processed at the site’s H-Canyon facility using a process developed at Savannah River National Laboratory. The work is being fully funded by Germany. The Department is in the initial stages of an environmental assessment for the proposal, and held a public meeting on June 24 on the scope of the assessment and is accepting public comments through July 21.
But many in South Carolina are reeling from a number of setbacks to efforts for removing nuclear waste from the state. DOE’s 2010 shutdown of the Yucca Mountain project left no permanent pathway out of South Carolina for high level defense waste and commercial used nuclear fuel. The earlier this year, DOE announced plans to suspend the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility project, which aimed to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium. Meanwhile, funding cuts to Savannah River mean a host of tank waste cleanup commitments to the state will likely be missed. At the same time, earlier this year DOE announced that it brought in smaller amounts of plutonium and HEU from Belgium and Italy and is looking to receive hundreds of kilograms of plutonium from Japan.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control has threatened DOE with fines due to what will likely be numerous broken cleanup commitments related to tank waste. “DHEC has no position on potential foreign fuel shipments at this time. DHEC urges DOE to meet cleanup commitments and milestones for risk reduction,” Shelly Wilson of DHEC told WC Monitor in a written response. Gov. Haley’s office did not respond to request for comment this week.
Editorial: Plan Turns SRS Into ‘Nuclear Roach Motel’
Editorials in two area newspapers this week opposing the German shipments focused on the lack of a permanent disposal pathway. “This plan essentially turns SRS, which has 713,000 people living within a 50-mile radius, into a nuclear Roach Motel. Highly radioactive material checks in, but it doesn’t check out,” states an editorial in the Augusta Chronicle. “The German deal would add as many as 100 canisters of high-level vitrified waste to the 3,800 already sitting at SRS with nowhere to go, and it could open the door for disposal agreements with other nations as well,” the Chronicle stated.
The Aiken Standard also voiced similar concerns. “Our state is continually threatened with becoming the dumping ground for waste. While it may have its economic benefits, the environmental and health risks of any kind of mishap far outweigh any financial profit,” it said in an editorial.
Competition With Cleanup Facilities a Concern
Given the delays in Savannah River high level waste cleanup, another major concern is if the added use of SRS facilities would be in competition with the cleanup mission. The Savannah River Citizen’s Advisory Board is currently drafting a response to the environmental assessment, CAB Chair Marolyn Parson told WC Monitor. “We want to make sure that this environmental assessment looks at the environmental impact of postulated delays in these cleanup project due to this new project. They are going to use H-Canyon, they are going to use the Defense Waste Processing Facility where the vitrification is taking place and they are going to produce over 100 of these glass logs,” she said. “How will these facilities be shared?”
The SRS Community Reuse Organization also had several questions for the Department regarding the environmental assessment. “While we believe the Savannah River Site (SRS) has the capability to safely handle and process the German HEU, we further believe there are some unresolved technical issues and several unknown community impacts that need to be evaluated before we can agree with a decision to accept this nuclear material at SRS,” CRO Executive Director Rick McLeod wrote in a June 24 letter to DOE. It added later, “More important, relative to community impacts, we believe the current scope of the EA is severely deficient in addressing those impacts. It is imperative that the EA scope include a thorough socioeconomic analysis.”
