U.S. to Move Plutonium to Savannah River Site

The Energy Department plans to move plutonium to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina from nuclear facilities in New Mexico, California and Washington state in an effort to consolidate U.S. nuclear materials, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 5).

The project “is a key part of the department’s efforts to properly manage surplus plutonium,” said Assistant Energy Secretary James Rispoli, adding that the consolidation would allow nuclear materials to be better secured for less money.

He said the shipments could begin as early as October and would be spread over three years.

The plutonium in the planned shipments was mostly produced during the Cold War as nuclear weapons material, but it also includes plutonium in fuel rods from a closed U.S. reactor.  Not included in the project is plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons or material needed for weapons research or for nuclear warhead triggers.

The exact amount of the plutonium, some of which is combined with highly enriched uranium, remains classified.  It is stored in 3,000 canisters the size of coffee cans that can each hold up to 9.7 pounds of material.  Rispoli said the canisters are not filled to capacity, AP reported.

The Energy Department’s Hanford facility in Washington state now holds about 2,300 of the canisters while an additional 700 canisters are stored at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories.

In response to concerns among South Carolina officials that the state could be permanently used to hold the surplus plutonium, Rispoli said the Energy Department plans to eventually move the material from the state.

 “The intent is not only to bring the plutonium there but dispose of it at the (Savannah) site and then have pathways for all of this material to leave the state,” he said, adding that a high-security facility is being prepared at the Savannah River complex to store the plutonium.

Energy Department officials plan to either convert the plutonium at Savannah River to a mixed-oxide fuel for civilian power production or encase it in glass logs for transfer to the planned national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Neither facility is expected to open before 2017, and the Yucca Mountain site might never become operational (Associated Press/USA Today, Sept. 5).

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