Owing to a renewed emphasis on producing plutonium pits for use in refurbished nuclear weapons, management of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina will revert to the National Nuclear Security Administration in October 2024.
The now-310-square-mile facility near Aiken, South Carolina, was the locus of plutonium and tritium production for the primary stages of U.S. nuclear weapons from the 1950s until 1992, when the Department of Energy’s focus turned to cleaning up the waste generated by Cold War-era nuclear weapons production.
At that point, the Savannah River Site began operating under the auspices of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), throwing much of its focus into cleanup of liquid waste from the plutonium program.
But by late next decade, when the liquid waste mission will be all but wound down, the site’s focus will return to nuclear weapons, as the NNSA and military look to recapitalize the entire U.S. nuclear stockpile.
In 2038, the Department of Energy estimates that Savannah River’s liquid waste mission will be substantially finished. A few years before then, the NNSA hopes the site will be producing even more than its minimum desired output of 50 plutonium pits annually, in the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility being built from the embryonic structure of the abandoned Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
“Given the steadily increasing NNSA mission requirements at the SRS and the concurrent progression of the EM clean-up mission toward defined end state(s), a decision was made by EM and NNSA to transition the [Savannah River Site] from EM to NNSA leadership,” a transition plan published Sept. 13 by the NNSA said.
As it stands, the plan assumes primary site management responsibility and bookkeeping will transfer from Environmental Management to NNSA in fiscal year 2025, which begins on Oct. 1, 2024.
In switching to landlord from tenant, NNSA will oversee the existing operations and security contracts, handled respectively by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and Centerra. Both providers are already contracted well beyond 2025. NNSA will become responsible for doing the performance review and fee determination for the two contractors, with input from the Environmental Management office.
Environmental Management and NNSA “will retain responsibility for management and disposition of their respective current inventory of special nuclear materials stored in K-Area Complex,” according to the plan.
Beginning in fiscal 2025, funding for these contracts will be carved out of EM’s budget and inserted into the NNSA operations budget, and both agency’s funding requests for that fiscal year will reflect the change, the plan said.
Once in charge of the site, NNSA’s responsibilities will include the overall $28 billion site management contract and its about 5,000 employees. NNSA also will oversee the five-year $469 million contract with Centerra for protective force services. The base period for that contract ends July 14, 2028 but the government holds two options that could stretch it to 2033.
NNSA also will assume responsibility for the K-Area Complex, where plutonium and nuclear waste are stored, and environmental permits issued by local, state and federal agencies.
Another $954 million contract with Ameresco, for operation of three biomass steam plants that ends in 2032, also will transfer to NNSA, according to the transition plan. Cleanup and waste management activities will remain with EM.
Other responsibilities transferring to NNSA include utilities such as electricity, water, sewer, steam, and fire water services. Dominion Energy South Carolina is currently under contract to provide power and maintain all 115-kilovolt transmission lines within the site. That 10-year, $225 million contract runs through May 2025.
In addition, construction assets mainly concentrated in N-area will transfer to NNSA. Emergency medical services, the site’s river water system, rail system, and various lakes, ponds, and dams also will fall under NNSA’s purview.
“All incumbent employees will be retained,” according to the transition plan.
