NEWS BRIEFS: Tons of nuclear waste predicted at proposed SRS project

Staff reports |  A plan to restart a defunct South Carolina nuclear facility near Aiken with a new mission has safety advocates worried about tons of new nuclear waste in a state with a checkered radioactivity record.

Aerial view in 2018 of the MOX plant at Savannah River Site. Photo is ©High Flyer, via SRS Watch. Used by permission.

“I estimate the pit project would bring in about 7.5 metric tons of plutonium, and most of that would go back out in the form of a pit, but there’s plutonium waste, transuranic waste, low-level radioactive waste and low-level mixed radioactive waste,” said Tom Clements, director of watchdog advocacy group SRS Watch. “There’s a large volume of nuclear waste that would be created, and some of it would be dumped in commercial facilities, but the preferred option is dumping it in on-site trenches.

“The last thing we need here in South Carolina is more nuclear waste,” said Clements, who has been monitoring SRS or working in its area for more than 40 years with various advocacy organizations, including Friends of the Earth off and on since 2008. 

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s new budget includes a request for $603 million toward the production of plutonium pits, a key component in nuclear warheads, at SRS. Nearly all pits currently in the U.S. stockpile were produced from 1978 to 1989 because the U.S. had only one active site for decades to produce new pits. The recent funding request marks a 37 percent increase from 2020, which moves the department closer to its goal of restoring pit production and producing 50 pits per year by 2030. 

“The essential problem with the work at the Savannah River Site (SRS) is there have been a number of newfangled ideas to either downgrade or reuse plutonium or other nuclear byproducts,” said Tonya Bonitatibus, executive director of Savannah Riverkeeper, a nonprofit advocacy group. “Often, that just means we bring in more waste that is indefinitely stored in South Carolina and often not used even for the purpose it was brought in for.”

Under the project plan,SRS would repurpose its unfinished Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility as a proposed Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF). 

“Repurposing this unfinished facility would allow NNSA [National Nuclear Security Administration] to make use of an existing seismically-qualified structure, with numerous supporting facilities, including office, assembly and fabrication space; construction facilities; and existing SRS services and infrastructure, such as security, fire protection and emergency response,” a 2020 SRS report said.

But South Carolina’s troubled history with nuclear production and the costs associated with it are leaving many skeptical. 

“I worked against the MOX project for over 20 years before it was terminated because I knew it was a bad idea and a waste of money,” Clements said. “The plutonium pit project is just what the MOX project has metamorphosed into.  “They’re jumping into this pit project without having learned the lesson from the MOX debacle, and the people pushing this — I think they’re going to get burned again.”  Read the full story by Skyler Baldwin at Statehouse Report.

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