The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Nevada have agreed in principle to settle a 2018 state lawsuit contesting the shipment of 500 kilograms of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site.
“The parties are currently working diligently to finalize the necessary documents and to obtain final government settlement approvals,” attorneys for the state and the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency wrote in a joint filing Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Nevada.
Nevada and the NNSA asked Judge Miranda Du to stay further action in the case until May 29. Prior to the breakthrough in settlement talks, which began earlier this year, the state wanted the federal govenment to remove the plutonium.
To comply with a court order in a separate federal lawsuit, the NNSA shipped the plutonium from South Carolina some time before November 2018. Nevada officials, unaware the plutonium had already been sent, filed suit that month to stop the shipment, later amending the complaint to demand removal of the plutonium.
The state said shipping the plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site’s Device Assembly Facility created a nuisance; threatened people, property, and Nevada’s tourism industry; and violated federal environmental law.
The NNSA said it complied with federal law by supplementing an existing environmental analysis on transporting plutonium, and that it was safe to keep the material in the Device Assembly Building – one of the newest NNSA facilities rated to safely store the fissile material.
The plutonium at issue in the case is part of a 34 metric-ton tranche once slated for disposal at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The now-terminated Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility was to turn it into commercial reactor fuel.
