About 20 kilograms of plutonium were transported from Switzerland to the United States during the first two months of the year, according to press releases from the Swiss government and the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Neither press release reveals where the material was sent, but an NNSA spokesperson said Thursday the plutonium was sent to the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
The plutonium was stored for decades, dating to the 1960s, at what is now the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen. It was kept in vaults that met the necessary national and international security measures, including inspections conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Swiss government said. The press release says the plutonium is of Swiss origin and comes from decades-old reprocessed fuel rods that were used in research reactors.
In the similar NNSA press release, Deputy Administrator Anne Harrington applauded the efforts. “Through this cooperative effort Switzerland has eliminated all the separated plutonium from its country, which supports international goals of consolidating and minimizing inventories of nuclear material,” Harrington said. The transport of the material to SRS was conducted by the NNSA Office of Material Management and Minimization. The office works with foreign governments to remove or dispose of high-risk nuclear materials at civilian facilities across the globe that could be used by terrorists to make an improvised nuclear device, according to the NNSA spokesperson.
In December, the agency reiterated its plans to bring about 900 kilograms of plutonium to SRS. The plutonium is expected to come from countries in Asia and Europe, and nearly 40 kilograms of plutonium from Sweden, Italy, and Belgium have already been removed and stored at the site under the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, a 12-year-old program to secure dangerous nuclear and radiological materials worldwide.
NNSA spokeswoman Francie Israeli said in December the agency first aims 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 said by email.
Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz in a January letter to South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley lauded his agency’s continued efforts to use SRS for plutonium storage as well as reprocessing through the H Canyon facility. However, Haley has been critical of the issue because several tons of plutonium related to the troubled SRS Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) are stored at SRS while more materials are being brought into South Carolina. The MFFF is the primary facility in the MOX project, the nation’s current pathway to meet an agreement with Russia that states each nation must dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium.
The U.S. chose the MOX method, which could convert the plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel. But cost projections to complete construction of the facility have ballooned, including a June projection from Moniz that it would cost $1 billion a year to fund the entire program if MOX is the chosen method. Following Moniz’s letter to Haley, the governor asked state Attorney General Alan Wilson to sue DOE because the federal agency had not yet honored a 2003 agreement that requires the department to either process 1 metric ton of the plutonium through the MFFF or remove a ton from the state. The penalty for not meeting the agreement is $1 million a day beginning on Jan. 1, 2016. According to Haley, Moniz’s letter “not only ignores the $1 million per day fine rightfully and statutorily due to South Carolina, it outlines its plan to send additional plutonium to the Savannah River Site.”
Wilson followed through and filed a lawsuit on Feb. 9, the same day President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget request was released. The DOE request aims to terminate MOX and move forward with an alternative that would dilute the plutonium using inhibitor materials and store the mix at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
