An advisory board to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is the latest entity in the state to support relocating Department of Energy nuclear warhead-core production to the Savannah River Site.
The board, known as the Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council (GNAC), voted 7-0 on Tuesday in support of the plan being considered by DOE. Two of the board’s nine members were not present.
“We endorse pit production at SRS,” GNAC Chairman Rick Lee said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “We think it would be a major project for our state and it would create jobs locally.”
The council’s support comes after DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) confirmed in December it is pondering if SRS – located near Aiken, S.C. – would be a good location to manufacture plutonium “pits.” Three municipalities within 20 miles of the facility – the city of North Augusta, the City of Aiken, and Aiken County – all recently voiced support of the project.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is the present home for the nation’s pit operations. The Energy Department gave approval in 2016 to increase the facility’s ability to store plutonium and produce pits. Overall, the NNSA wants to increase pit production to 80 pits a year by 2030.
Now, the agency is wondering if Savannah River would be more ideal, particularly if the site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) is repurposed for pit production.
The MFFF is being built to convert 34 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel, under the terms of a 2001 U.S.-Russian arms control deal. But since construction started in 2007, the MFFF has suffered cost overruns and delays, prompting both the Obama and Trump administrations to attempt to cancel the project. However, Congress has kept funding for the project at roughly $340 million per year.
Converting the MFFF into a plutonium pit production operation would cost between $1.4 billion and $5.4 billion, according to a nine-page summary of an NNSA price analysis that leaked to the press in late 2017. The agency said keeping pit production at Los Alamos would cost $1.9 billion to $7.5 billion. The shift could also pick up the pace of pit production, according to the NNSA forecast: 2031 in South Carolina vs. 2033 in New Mexico.
Lee said the council wants pit production added to the MOX plant’s mission, rather than replacing plutonium recycling: “We think both programs are worthwhile in our state.”
The board has submitted its recommendation to McMaster, who will decide if he will honor the recommendation by lobbying for it with Congress and other stakeholders. McMaster’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
New Mexico’s congressional delegation has decried the NNSA analysis as being based on questionable assumptions. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy is expected to more fully lay out its pit production plan in the fiscal 2019 budget request scheduled to be issued on Feb. 12.
