A key figure in multiple federal lawsuits involving weapon-usable plutonium moved last year to the Nevada National Security Site from the Savannah River Site in South carolina has retired from the Department of Energy, the agency confirmed Tuesday.
Henry Allen Gunter left DOE after a long federal career, a spokesperson for DOE’s Environmental Management Office at Savannah River said by email.
There was no public announcement of Gunter’s departure. Tom Cantey, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) surplus plutonium disposition program manager, mentioned Gunter’s retirement last week during a public presentation to a National Academies panel.
Gunter was most recently the department Office of Environmental Management’s plutonium program manager and senior technical adviser to the assistant manager for nuclear materials stabilization at the Savannah River Operations Office. Gunter had held that role for more than 35 years, according to a 2017 court filing.
The DOE spokesperson refused to say when Gunter retired.
In August 2017, DOE made a 29-page analysis by Gunter the cornerstone of its defense in a federal lawsuit brought by South Carolina, which wanted the agency to remove some 10 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium from Savannah River. In his analysis, Gunter said it would be risky and expensive, if not impossible, to start removing the plutonium from the site before 2025.
The analysis did not sway the federal judge in the case, who in December 2017 ordered DOE to move 1 metric ton of this plutonium out of South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020. The department and the NNSA quickly stood up an ad hoc group of agency experts to come up with an alternative to Gunter’s analysis.
In 2018, the NNSA decided to ship the 1 metric ton of plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The state of Nevada sued the NNSA on Nov. 30, 2018, in U.S. District Court for Nevada to stop the shipments. The state seized on Gunter’s August 2017 declaration as evidence that the NNSA’s plan violated federal environmental law. Now, Nevada wants to depose Gunter in the lawsuit.
The NNSA admitted in January that it had moved half a metric ton of plutonium to NNSS from Savannah River before Nevada sued.
