The Department of Energy’s proposed plan to remove plutonium from the Savannah River Site does not include 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 they 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 schedules and timelines to do so.
South Carolina said on July 31 that at least 1 ton of the material should be removed within two years of settling the dispute, and that DOE should be required to submit regular progress reports on how the work is going. The Energy Department said on Aug. 7 it would need until fiscal 2025 to remove a ton.
In the latest filings, released on 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.
In a two-paragraph response to the state’s Monday proposal, DOE wrote that the state’s request is “impossible, premature, unnecessary, and even potentially dangerous.” It said a two-year deadline is unsupported by evidence.
