With half a metric ton of plutonium already shipped there over the state’s objections, Nevada on Thursday asked a federal judge to block the Department of Energy from sending any more of the fissile material.
In a request for a preliminary injunction filed Thursday, the state asked U.S. District Judge Miranda Du to stop DOE from moving more plutonium to the federally owned Nevada National National Security Site (NNSS) until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rules on Nevada’s earlier request to block an already completed shipment from the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
Without an injunction, Nevada fears the Energy Department “could do again what it has done before— surreptitiously ship additional plutonium to Nevada,” according to Thursday’s filing.
Nevada on Nov. 30 sued DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), claiming the agency could not ship plutonium to NNSS from South Carolina until it completed a lengthy environmental review.
The NNSA must ship 1 metric ton of plutonium out of South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020, per a 2017 order issued by the U.S. District Court in South Carolina as part of a separate lawsuit brought by the state of South Carolina. Last week, the NNSA acknowledged in the District Court in Nevada that the agency had shipped half a metric ton of that material to NNSS at least a month before the Silver State sued to stop the shipment.
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) and the state’s U.S. Senate delegation all said the agency gave them only about as much notice of the shipment as the general public got. That notice arrived around late August, when the agency disclosed in an environmental document called a supplement analysis that it would send the exiled plutonium to NNSS and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.
In the supplement analysis, the NNSA said it might shuttle plutonium between Pantex and NNSS before the material heads to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to be turned into fissile warhead cores called pits some time in the next decade. The plutonium sent to Nevada last year will remain there until 2026 or 2027, the NNSA wrote in papers filed with the Nevada court.
In response to press queries this week, the NNSA has declined to say whether any plutonium has already shipped to Pantex. The office of Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the House Armed Services Committee ranking member whose district includes Pantex, did not reply to a request for comment this week.
Meanwhile, Nevada officials have fired a salvo of strongly worded letters to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, demanding answers about the already-completed plutonium shipment, and about the agency’s plans for future shipments.
In a heated letter dated Feb. 6, Sisolak told Perry and NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty that shipping half a metric ton of plutonium to NNSS’ Device Assembly Building without keeping Nevada in the loop “destroyed any semblance of trust DOE and NNSA may have developed with representatives of this State.”
Sisolak demanded “full and complete answers” by Feb. 19 to 13 questions. Among other things, the governor wants to know: how much plutonium the NNSA can store at the Device Assembly Facility; the form in which the plutonium is stored — the agency has said only that this particular tranche is not in the form of warhead cores called pits; and whether the NNSA plans to send any more plutonium to NNSS from South Carolina.
Nevada’s U.S. Senate delegation is also looking for details.
In a letter to Perry and Gordon-Hagerty last week, Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) accused the Department of Energy of lying about the timing of the 2018 shipments, and demanded the agency provide classified details of the campaign, including the number of truck shipments and the route over which these materials traveled.
The senators also asked in the letter that “all non-classified responses to our questions be delivered to our offices by Feb. 15, 2019.” They did not say when, or where, they wanted a classified briefing. Spokespersons for the senators did not reply to requests for comments.
The NNSA is potentially on the hook to move even more plutonium out of South Carolina. The agency is shipping 1 metric ton of plutonium out of South Carolina this year and last because it failed to turn the material into commercial reactor fuel using the now-cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at Savannah River.
The plant was supposed to turn 34 metric tons of plutonium into commercial reactor fuel as part of a 2000 arms control pact with Russia, in which Moscow ceased participating in 2016. The federation claimed it suspended participation because the U.S. abandoned the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
The NNSA’s alternative Savannah River plutonium-disposal plan, called dilute-and-dispose, is not projected to be ready before Jan. 1, 2022, when federal law requires the agency to remove all defense plutonium brought to South Carolina since April 15, 2002. In court documents, South Carolina estimated the NNSA has shipped about 10 metric tons of defense plutonium to that state since 2002.
