Nevada’s lawsuit seeking to prevent the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from shipping a metric ton of plutonium to the state should be should be transferred to a court in South Carolina, lawyers for that state said Monday.
Nevada could have filed its Nov. 30 suit in U.S. District Court for South Carolina, which “retains continuing jurisdiction” over the plutonium at issue and “has already ordered” the NNSA to adhere to federal environmental law when it ships the material from the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., South Carolina said in a motion to U.S. District Court in Nevada.
Nevada alleges the NNSA plans to move plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site’s Device Assembly Facility from the Savannah River Site without completing a federally required environmental review.
The agency has until Jan. 1, 2020, to move the plutonium at issue, per a 2017 ruling by the South Carolina District Court in a separate lawsuit South Carolina brought in 2016. The NNSA wants to use the plutonium to produce fissile warhead cores at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico beginning in 2024, but the lab currently lacks space to store the material.
Nevada fears the NNSA could start moving plutonium to the Silver State before the end of January and, along with its lawsuit, has filed for preliminary injunction to block the shipments. The NNSA, in papers filed with the District Court for South Carolina last year, estimated the plutonium could be ready to move by March or so.
South Carolina opposes the injunction, claiming it would deprive the Palmetto State of a hard-fought victory. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno on Monday formally allowed South Carolina to intervene in Nevada’s suit.
The NNSA claims it has already done the environmental reviews required to store the material temporarily in Nevada and the Pantex weapons assembly and disassembly plant in Amarillo, Texas.
Du has scheduled a hearing about the injunction for Thursday in Reno. Nevada has until Friday to respond to South Carolina’s motion to relocate the case.
