Plans are under way to remove weapon-usable plutonium from the Savannah River Site even as a separate project would bring more foreign plutonium to the South Carolina facility, according to recent and past Department of Energy documents. Both efforts are intended to ensure plutonium that can be used to make nuclear weapons will be disposed of safely and kept from those wishing to use the material for harm, said Francie Israeli, a spokeswoman for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The Department of Energy wrote on Dec. 24 that it has a preferred alternative for processing 6 tons of plutonium stored at SRS and shipping the material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The plan was introduced as early as April 2015 in a Final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, but gained traction late last month after a report released by nuclear watchdog SRS Watch mentioned the impact statement, among several other related reports. Israeli said the preferred alternative outlined in December updates the April report and confirms that DOE wishes to remove the 6 tons of plutonium from SRS.
The report evaluates the environmental impacts that could come with seeking safe and timely disposition of approximately 13.1 metric tons of surplus plutonium. About 7.1 metric tons of the material is pit plutonium – plutonium that came from the pit, or core, of a nuclear weapon. Another 6 metric tons is non-pit plutonium. A final, disposition pathway has not yet been assigned for either form, but Israeli said processing the non-pit plutonium at SRS is now part of the discussion.
The Department of Energy is also looking into bringing about 900 kilograms of plutonium to the site for temporary storage. The plutonium would come from Japan and two European countries. Nearly 40 kilograms of plutonium from Sweden, Italy, and Belgium has already been removed and stored at SRS, according to a Global Threat Reduction Initiative presentation made by DOE in December 2014. Israeli said the department first wants to find a way to get the plutonium away from harmful people without bringing it to the United States. However, the U.S. will assume ownership "if we can find no other reasonable pathway to address U.S. national security interests," she stated by email.
