Rather than making another request for an environmental impact statement (EIS) before the U.S. transports liquid highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Canada to the Savannah River Site, U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.) is instead asking to remove from consideration the route that would send the uranium through his district.
The Energy Department anticipates overseeing up to 150 shipments beginning this summer, with receipt and processing of the material expected to take up to three years. When all is said and done, SRS will be home to another 6,000-plus gallons of HEU, which will be processed at H Canyon along with spent nuclear fuel that is being processed from L Basin. The recovered uranium will be purified and then blended with natural uranium to produce low-enriched uranium (LEU). That material will then be transferred to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) where it will be converted into fuel for use in TVA reactors.
In a March 15 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Higgins said the planned transportation route runs through a “high risk area” in his district. The route begins at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, then goes over the Peace Bridge and through western New York on its way south to SRS, near Aiken, S.C. – a distance of more than 1,100 miles. Higgins has been trying to stop the transfer for years due to what he called a “lack of current environmental or threat assessments.” The HEU is highly radioactive and has never been shipped in liquid form by truck, Higgins said.
He added that the route would take the HEU through downtown Buffalo and also bring the material close to the Great Lakes, which provide 84 percent of the continent’s surface fresh water. The Buffalo-Niagara region is home to four international bridge crossings and the Niagara Power Project, the largest electricity producer in the state of New York, Higgins said. “In recognition of the danger associated with transporting this material through a high risk area, I respectfully request that your agency remove this route from consideration for the planned liquid waste shipments,” Higgins wrote in the letter. “Failure to reconsider would run counter to the mounting public and Congressional concern over these actions.”
The NRC said in a brief email on Monday that it will reply to Higgins “in the near future” and that the response will offer its position on the issue.
In the United States, the Department of Transportation requires the use of interstate highways, when available, for transportation of hazardous materials, an Energy Department spokesperson said. Potential routes are surveyed physically to ensure that the transport vehicles can travel with adequate access to food and fuel. “Once a route is surveyed, the NRC reviews and approves the survey and issues a route approval. We have been using this particular route through Buffalo for more than 20 years without incident,” the spokesperson said. The route was used in September 2011 and again in September 2012 for spent fuel shipments from the Chalk River Laboratories to SRS in support of efforts to secure vulnerable nuclear material around the world, DOE said.
But Higgins still believes the route’s viability has likely changed over the years, particularly in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks more than a decade ago. Prior to his call to remove the route from consideration, he repeatedly asked for an updated EIS to be conducted and also sponsored legislation in the U.S. House seeking more information on the safety of using the route before shipments began. The bill passed the House unanimously but has been in the Senate since October with no action taken to date.
Though Higgins has not gotten his wish for an EIS, DOE last year did prepare a supplemental analysis. The analysis concluded that the transport constitutes low risk because the HEU will be shipped in containers specifically designed and fabricated for transporting liquid material, DOE spokesman Jim Giusti said in December. He added that the containers meet standards established by the International Atomic Energy Agency and were certified by the NRC and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Testing of the containers included free-drop testing from 9 meters onto an unyielding surface and thermal testing to assure they remain leak tight.
