Kenneth Fletcher
NS&D Monitor
3/28/2014

Plans to send a significant amount of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Japan to the United States are raising questions for officials near the material’s likely home at the Savannah River Site. Citing concerns over plutonium already in the state, South Carolina this month filed suit against the Obama Administration over its recent decision to suspend the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility project at SRS. The Department of Energy has not yet said where the material from Japan will be sent, but it may end up as an issue for the state. “It is not known whether DOE is planning to ship plutonium from Japan to SRS. [The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control] will press DOE to make a waste determination for the Japanese plutonium prior to any planned shipment to SRS,” DHEC spokesman Mark Plowden said.

The Japan announcement comes as the state moves to potentially classify as waste the 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium that had been destined for MOX. That material had been expected to be converted into fuel for use in nuclear reactors, but the state says that may change given the Department’s latest plans. “If the material contains hazardous waste, the Department of Energy must dispose of it properly within one year, or keep MOX open to avoid the reclassification,” South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control Director Catherine Templeton said in a statement.

Part of the state’s willingness to accept plutonium from around the DOE complex has hinged on a promise from DOE to provide an exit pathway with MOX. SDHEC has asked DOE to clarify the status of the plutonium feed intended for MOX. “As the project is not moving forward, the technologically feasible options for the material scheduled to be processed at MOX appear to be either disposal or accumulation before disposal,” the state wrote in a March 21 letter to DOE. “Given this new information, DOE should clarify the waste status of the plutonium and plutonium mixtures at Savannah River Site and describe how the material will be handled going forward.”

Japan Pu Will Be Prepared For Disposal

At this week’s Nuclear Security Summit (see related story), Japan and the United States committed to the removal of “hundreds of kilograms” of plutonium and HEU from the Fast Critical Assembly in Japan. “This material, once securely transported to the United States, will be sent to a secure facility and fully converted into less sensitive forms. The plutonium will be prepared for final disposition.  The HEU will be downblended to low enriched uranium (LEU) and utilized for civilian purposes,” according to a joint Japan-U.S. statement. The material will be stored securely until it can be permanently dispositioned, according to National Nuclear Security Administration spokeswoman Keri Fulton. “For security reasons, we can not disclose the location of the final destination. The final determination of where the material will be processed is yet to be decided,” Fulton said.

However, Savannah River is seen as the most likely candidate. The site’s H-Canyon facility has been used extensively to downblend HEU to LEU for reactors. And plutonium from around the U.S. weapons complex is consolidated at the site’s K-Area. Some weapons-grade plutonium not suitable for MOX has been processed in the HB-Line for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, with the first shipments made in 2012. At HB-Line the plutonium is blended with a safeguard agent known as “stardust” to reduces the proliferation threat, and then it is put into pipe overpack containers for shipment and disposal.

Editorial: Aiken County ‘At a Dangerous Crossroads’

The incoming nuclear material announced at this week’s meeting, which also includes smaller amounts of plutonium and HEU from Belgium and Italy already received in the United States, has also been an issue of concern for the Savannah River Site Citizens’ Advisory Board. Members of the CAB pressed DOE this week about plans for the plutonium, and expressed concern that with the current shutdown of WIPP the material could be stored at Savannah River indefinitely, according to the Aiken Standard. DOE-SR Manager Dave Moody told the CAB that SRS has not yet received a schedule for that material, according to reports.

The news prompted the local paper to pen an editorial opposing sending the material from Japan to Savannah River. “Our community should be looking for ways to have nuclear material exit the Savannah River Site, not a path to stockpile more,” states the Aiken Standard editorial. It adds: “With the lack of a permanent federal repository for such waste—and the federal government still searching for a solution to clean up or reuse nuclear material—it seems to put South Carolina, especially Aiken County, at a dangerous crossroads.”

Clements: SRS ‘Becoming Secret Storage Site’

Meanwhile, Tom Clements of the South Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club called for more information on the material and an environmental report. “Now that they have arrived in the US, the continued secrecy by NNSA about the shipments of special nuclear material from Belgium and Italy is totally unjustified. There is absolutely no security reason not to reveal the amounts of material received and where the HEU and plutonium is now stored. It is clear that the plutonium was shipped to the Savannah River Site, where there is absolutely no disposition plan for plutonium outside the US plutonium disposition program,” he said in a statement.

He added: “As it appears that SRS is now becoming the secret storage site of non-weapons plutonium from around the world, it is imperative that NNSA meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and begin preparing a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement about long-term storage and disposition options for such plutonium.”