Equipment failures might delay shipments of U.S. plutonium from Rocky Flats, Colo., to South Carolina’s Savannah River Site, Scripps Howard News Service reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 6).

Flaws in the semi-automated machine that loads plutonium into shipping containers have already caused some, according to the news service.  The machine, which loads the plutonium into the containers and then seals them, shut down for three weeks in September, and one in five containers are still failing weld or safety tests, said David Hicks, a U.S. Energy Department plutonium removal manager.

“The machine is still temperamental ... but there’s every reason to believe we will finish, probably in the summer,” Hicks said.

Rocky Flats workers had planned to load and seal the expected 1,900 containers of plutonium by January 2003 — an average of 140 barrels per month, according to Scripps Howard.  Over the 17 months that the machine has been in operation, however, only 1,050 containers have been completed — an average of 62 per month.  Rocky Flats managers have said they need to complete the plutonium shipments by the end of next year to meet a 2006 deadline to close the site.

“If we complete packaging by summer, we will have no problem supporting the shipping campaign,” Hicks said (Katy Human, Scripps Howard News Service, Nov. 4).

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