A third South Carolina jurisdiction has officially called on the Department of Energy to move production of plutonium pits — the fissile hearts of nuclear warheads — to the Savannah River Site from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
On Tuesday, the city of North Augusta, which neighbors the Savannah River Site, passed a resolution encouraging the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to add pit production to the list of the site’s missions.
The NNSA has studied whether it could convert the still-under-construction Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at Savannah River into a pit plant. However, North Augusta and two other South Carolina localities — Aiken County and the city of Aiken — want the pit work in addition to the original MFFF mission of turning weapon-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel.
The Aiken-area governments passed their resolutions last week, in an apparent grass-roots groundswell that South Carolina’s congressional delegation has yet to acknowledge publicly.
On Wednesday, Gary Bunker, chairman of the Aiken County Council, said the county has made overtures to statewide office holders.
“The resolutions have been forwarded to these officials and we’ve been in communication with some of them,” Bunker said by email. He declined to describe the communication further.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), whose district includes Savannah River Site, has declined multiple requests for comment about the possibility of moving the NNSA’s pit work to the site, as has Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): a stalwart defender of MFFF.
New Mexico’s congressional delegation flatly opposes taking the pit work away from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which under the NNSA’s notional plans will soon receive billions of dollars in federal funding to update lab metallurgy infrastructure to produce up to 80 plutonium pits a year by 2030.
