South Carolina and the federal government are conducting discussions toward settling a lawsuit in which the state has alleged that the government breached an agreement by not processing plutonium through the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson in February 2016 sued the Energy Department, then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz, arguing that DOE needed to remove 1 ton of plutonium from the Savannah River Site by last January, either by processing it at the MOX plant or by taking it out of the state.
Because the DOE did not do either, the state imposed a daily fine of $1 million – with an annual cap of $100 million – which the DOE had agreed to under a 2003 deal. Wilson filed the lawsuit after the DOE failed to pay the fine.
An amended scheduling order filed Friday in U.S. District Court of South Carolina directs the state and federal defendants to begin settlement discussions on the plutonium issue, which will end by July 31. Mediation, if agreed to by the two parties, should also end by that time, it said. Newly confirmed Energy Secretary Rick Perry is named as a defendant, along with Klotz.
The MOX facility is under construction at the Savannah River Site to dispose of 34 metric tons of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium under a nonproliferation agreement with Russia. The future of the facility remains in question, as the Obama administration’s DOE pushed to terminate the project in favor of an alternative plutonium dilution and disposal method, which lawmakers in Congress have so far resisted.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs dismissed the monetary fines, which the state could not refile in the Court of Federal Claims.