Several anti-nuclear groups are suing the Department of Energy and DOE officials because they believe the agency has not provided the necessary documents before authorizing up to 150 shipments of liquid highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Canada to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Energy Department would not verify if shipments have started, but previously said they were expected to start sometime this summer. The shipments will total more than 6,000 gallons of HEU.
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 (now in spent fuel form) and fission products.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Beyond Nuclear, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Savannah River Site Watch, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Lone Tree Council, Sierra Club, and Environmentalists Inc. They are suing the Energy Department; Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz; Monica Regalbuto, assistant energy secretary for environmental management; David Huizenga, principal assistant deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration; and SRS Manager Jack Craig.
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 12 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks 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.”
But last year, DOE prepared a supplemental analysis and concluded that an EIS was not necessary. The analysis concluded that the transport constitutes low risk because the HEU will be shipped in containers specifically designed and fabricated for holding liquid material. The containers meet standards established by the International Atomic Energy Agency and were certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (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.
The plaintiffs also allege that DOE failed to provide a thorough public process, which they say violates the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). “An Environmental Impact Statement must be prepared and made available for other federal agencies and citizens to review and comment on, including a discussion of alternative ways to deal with the nuclear waste,” the plaintiffs wrote in a press release.
The Energy Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.
At least one lawmaker agrees with the anti-nuclear community on this issue. For more than two years, U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.) has been requesting an EIS and has also pressed to remove from consideration the route that would send the HEU through 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. The HEU is highly radioactive and has never been shipped in liquid form by truck, Higgins wrote in a March letter to the NRC.
A DOE spokesperson said at that time that the route and the shipments are safe. The route was used by DOE/NNSA in September 2011 and again in September 2012 for spent fuel shipments from Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories to SRS.
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.