The Department of Energy’s proposed plan to remove plutonium from the Savannah River Site does not hold the agency accountable if it misses deadlines, South Carolina said this week in its latest filing in a federal lawsuit on the dispute.
While the state wants the court to hold DOE’s feet to the fire, the department maintained in its own statement Monday that it cannot complete the plutonium removal within the two-year timespan South Carolina is demanding.
South Carolina sued DOE and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration in February 2016, asserting the federal agencies had breached a 2003 agreement to by Jan. 1, 2016, either remove 1 metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium from SRS, or process that amount using the site’s still-unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF).
The state says the plutonium still must go, and that it is owed $1 million per day over the missed deadline, capped at $100 million in both 2016 and 2017.
U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs determined in February that the 2016 monetary claim of $100 million should be settled in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (CFC), and that DOE must remove the plutonium from South Carolina, but ordered the sides to deliberate on the schedule for that target.
South Carolina has sued in CFC for the $100 million it believes DOE must pay for 2017, and said it will later return to the matter of the 2016 penalty.
The state said on July 31 that at least 1 ton of plutonium should be removed within two years of settling the dispute, and that DOE should be required to submit regular reports on how the work is progressing. The Energy Department said on Aug. 7 it would need until fiscal 2025 to remove a ton because “processing and removing large amounts of plutonium takes a significant amount of time to comply with the myriad statutes, regulations, rules, and requirements that govern the handling, processing, transport, and disposition of defense plutonium.”
In the latest filings, released Monday, the state said DOE’s proposal is devoid of accountability if the department fails to remove plutonium. South Carolina also has a problem with DOE’s claim that it is “impossible” to meet a two-year deadline.
“There is no way to know at this point if meeting a two-year deadline is impossible because the Federal Defendants have not yet attempted to meet such a deadline,” South Carolina said. The state added that Congress gave DOE the same amount of time to remove plutonium in 2003. “Congress has already considered ‘the work that is necessary to accomplish removal consistently with (National Environmental Policy Act) and other applicable laws,’ and has determined that two years is a sufficient amount time to complete this work,” the state wrote.
In a two-paragraph response, DOE said the state’s request is “impossible, premature, unnecessary, and even potentially dangerous.” It said a two-year deadline is unsupported by evidence. “This Court should decline the State’s requested relief and instead order Defendants to continue working diligently, in good faith, to remove one metric ton of defense plutonium from South Carolina as expeditiously as reasonably possible,” DOE wrote.
Childs is considering both statements, but it is unclear if her next move will include an order, or if she’ll require more action from either party.
