The state of South Carolina appears to hope a letter sent out by the Energy Department that addresses the timeline for new nuclear waste shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) will buffer the state’s argument that the federal government should continue building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site.
South Carolina sued the Energy Department, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz, on Feb. 9 – the same day the Obama administration made clear it intends to terminate the MOX project. The state is seeking $100 million and removal of 1 metric ton of plutonium from SRS, alleging that the federal government failed to meet the deadline set under a 2003 agreement to by Jan. 1, 2016, process that amount of plutonium through the MFFF or remove it from South Carolina.
The Energy Department has been building the MFFF to meet the terms of a 2000 agreement that requires the United States and Russia to each dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium. But DOE’s fiscal 2017 budget proposal would cut funding for the MOX project in favor of downblending, through which the plutonium would be diluted using SRS facilities and then shipped to WIPP, an underground facility in New Mexico for storage of transuranic waste.
On Sept. 15, an attorney representing South Carolina filed in U.S. District Court for South Carolina an Aug. 4 letter sent by the DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, to a number of recipients. The letter states that there are no currently scheduled shipments to WIPP from Aug. 31, 2016, to July 31, 2017. The facility has been shut down since February 2014 due to two separate incidents — a salt haul truck fire on Feb. 5 and the release of a small amount of radiation on Feb. 14.
In the court filing, attorney Randolph Lowell said the schedule for waste acceptance at WIPP relates to the lawsuit. He specifically cited a declaration from SRS plutonium program manager Henry Allen Gunter, in a federal motion opposing the state’s request for summary judgment in the lawsuit, that “WIPP emplacement operations are currently planned to resume in late calendar year 2016.”
Earlier this year, the federal government announced that WIPP would reopen in December 2016. DOE officials have continued to cite that schedule, though acknowledging in recent months that meeting the deadline will be challenging. A Weapons Complex Monitor analysis of milestones completed to date shows the WIPP restart is about 30 days behind schedule, suggesting reopening could occur in January. Waste stored above-ground at WIPP would be the first to be moved to the mine; only afterward could waste shipments from other DOE sites resume. Those shipments should begin by April, DOE officials have said.
South Carolina suggested in the Sept. 15 letter that a WIPP reopening this year won’t mean much if DOE still doesn’t know when it will be ready to accept more waste. South Carolina previously argued that uncertainty at WIPP could leave SRS holding unwanted weapon-usable plutonium — which is why, in the state’s opinion, the MOX project should continue. The Energy Department does not currently have a schedule for when downblended material from SRS would be sent to the WIPP. In a February budget briefing at DOE headquarters in Washington, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said shipments might begin in the early 2020s.
The state has also said DOE has not offered clarity regarding plans to send plutonium to the WIPP. For example, in a May 24 case filing, the state argued that the federal government has only proposed the idea of moving defense plutonium to the WIPP. “The Federal Defendants lack the Congressional approval to follow through with this proposal or the proposed alternative, and in fact have acknowledged that they have not even completed ‘pre-conceptual design’ for this option,” South Carolina wrote in the filing.
Both sides in the case have filed multiple motions in the case. On June 30, Judge Michelle Childs heard arguments on the DOE’s motion to have the case dismissed and South Carolina’s request for summary judgment of its lawsuit. She has yet to rule on either motion.
Both the state and DOE declined to comment on the issue.
