A longstanding plan to send highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Canada to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has been delayed at least until Feb. 17, 2017 – an agreed-upon date that is expected to give the federal government enough time to prove it is meeting contractual and legal obligations for the shipments. The U.S.-origin material was sent to Canada under the Atoms for Peace program, and used to produce molybdenum-99 for medical purposes. Under the program, the United States pledged to take back the HEU and fission products.
SRS, located near Aiken, S.C., was supposed to begin receiving shipments in September. But multiple anti-nuclear groups sued the Department of Energy and other parties in August in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that necessary steps were not taken before the department authorized up to 150 shipments from the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario that total 6,000 gallons of HEU. The groups are asking that shipments not start until the Department of Energy completes an environmental impact statement (EIS) that details the potential risks of moving the material. The plaintiffs say the transport poses a wide spectrum of dangers, “whether from leakage of the liquid contents due to sabotage, accident, or malfunction or from the emanation of penetrating gamma and neutron radiation from the cargo during transportation due to accidental criticality or inadequacies in shielding.”
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Beyond Nuclear, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Savannah River Site Watch, and other nongovernmental organizations. The plaintiffs include DOE, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and SRS Manager Jack Craig.
A Sept. 20 joint motion states that the two sides have agreed to postpone the HEU shipments so the court has sufficient time to “issue a decision prior to the date Defendants have determined the Canadian shipments must commence.” In order to expedite the process, the two parties have outlined a schedule between now and the February deadline that both parties are expected to meet. For example, the plaintiffs have until Nov. 14 to file their motion for a summary judgment in the lawsuit and the defendants have until Dec. 5 to respond to that motion.
