At least 1 metric ton of plutonium stored at the Savannah River Site may be suitable for use in the nation’s defense program and could be shipped out of South Carolina in time to meet a Jan. 1, 2020, deadline set late last year by a federal judge, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The department offered the statement in a June 15 progress report for a lawsuit filed by the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office last year in U.S. District Court. The report details what steps DOE has taken to date to rid the state of at least 1 ton of plutonium.
The report says a senior committee of officials from DOE and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has found Energy Department candidate sites that could store the material until it is ready for use. The report did not state which sites or how many are being considered.
In December, District Judge J. Michelle Childs ordered the Energy Department to remove at least 1 ton of weapon-usable plutonium from the facility near Aiken, S.C., by the 2020 deadline.
South Carolina sued to force the removal because it says the agency breached a 2003 state-federal agreement that enabled DOE to build the SRS Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at Savannah River to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium under a U.S.-Russian arms control deal. In return, DOE was supposed to process or remove at least 1 ton of plutonium by Jan. 1, 2016. That has not happened, and the MFFF remains unfinished.
The Energy Department is appealing Childs’ ruling. In the meantime, it is following the judge’s order to submit progress reports every six months on the plutonium-removal process.
In the latest report, DOE indicated it is possible to repurpose 1 metric ton of the plutonium, which could “likely be accomplished in a timeframe that would satisfy the Court Order.” The report says the plutonium would be used for the national defense program, but does not provide additional details.
The Energy Department listed several drawbacks to using this plutonium removal method. For starters, the material in question cannot be prepared for shipment while SRS is continuing to downblend a
separate 6-ton tranche of plutonium into a form safe for permanent disposal. That is due to safety restrictions and a lack of sufficient personnel to simultaneously conduct the downblending and repurposing missions.
The agency did not provide details about the safety restrictions, but said “repackaging of one metric ton expected to take approximately 9 to 12 months and downblending at SRS will be severely limited during this time.”
The agency hinted that a better use of time would be preparing the site to downblend the 34 metric tons of plutonium intended for the MFFF, a facility DOE has sought to kill for years. Right now, DOE estimates it would take until fiscal 2025 to remove a ton of plutonium due to limited staffing and strict downblending rates. But if more workers were brought on board to meet the mission for the MOX-able material, the agency says that timeline could be reduced. “With hiring, training and qualifying of additional personnel, the previous timetable… may be accelerated by up to two years, contingent upon adequate funding,” the agency wrote.
The department is expected to provide more details on the matter in its December report.
The state Attorney General’s Office said Thursday it cannot comment on the progress report since the lawsuit is ongoing.
The state has two other open lawsuits filed against the department over the MFFF. One filed last year in U.S. Court of Federal Claims seeks $200 million from the Energy Department, stating that, per the 2003 agreement, DOE was supposed to pay the state $1 million a day – capping at $100 million annually – if the agency failed to remove a ton of plutonium by the 2016 deadline.
In a District Court suit filed on May 25, the state said DOE breached its commitment to MOX by announcing May 10 that it was terminating the project. While the case is still open, Childs ruled in favor of the state’s motion for a preliminary injunction on June 7, specifically directing that she must authorize any further attempts by DOE to terminate the project. She agreed with South Carolina’s argument that DOE had not conducted thorough environmental and safety analyses before deciding to shutter the project.
