nuclear-news

State should be wary of plan for more nuclear waste to SRS after years of broken promises. Plans for reprocessing, permanent storage in Nevada all have fallen by the wayside as waste piles up. The Savannah River Site near Aiken was not designed as a permanent or even a long-term storage site for high-level nuclear waste. Yet, because of broken promises and foot-dragging by the federal government, SRS has become just that. Now, there is word that the United States and Germany are in discussions about bringing even more nuclear waste to the site. Such a proposal should be met with extreme circumspection.

The United States Department of Energy is evaluating a plan to accept waste from a German prototype reactor, according to a recent report in The Greenville News. The talks began in 2011, and there is no agreement in place. However, it is troubling that there would even be discussion about bringing in more nuclear waste even as material that was supposed to be temporarily stored at SRS continues to sit with no viable plan in place to move it or process it.

The discussions are over approximately 1 ton of nuclear material that would be transported in canisters to SRS.

There already is a great deal of high-level nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site, including 37 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste that the government promised would be cleaned up by the mid-2020s. Instead, in some cases, the containers holding the waste are leaking, creating a dangerous situation. Much of the waste at SRS was brought in under the promise that it would be reprocessed and then removed from the state. That has yet to happen. Until it does, South Carolina should resist plans to bring more nuclear waste to the Savannah River Site. The arrival of the German waste is far from imminent, and it should stay that way until promises already made are being fulfilled. That day right now seems to be a long way off.

The broken promises for South Carolina have come over the course of several years.

SRS was supposed to be home to a fuel reprocessing plant that would have turned much of the waste at the site into fuel for nuclear power plants. The Obama administration now is strongly urging that the proposed reprocessing plant be put on hold. Given that there are no apparent buyers for the fuel, it is difficult to challenge the administration’s decision on a practical level while at the same time it is completely reasonable to expect the administration to make good on promises to South Carolina.

It stands as a deplorable failure of the federal government to deliver on promises made when former Gov. Jim Hodges unsuccessfully fought efforts to ship plutonium to South Carolina. Work on the Mixed Oxide reprocessing plant began in 2007. Years of delays and cost overruns have contributed to the apparent demise of this facility. Initially estimated to cost $3.8 billion, the budget has surged past $7.5 billion and the facility remains unfinished……….

The federal government has not been a trustworthy partner when it comes to shipping radioactive material to the Savannah River Site. As a spokesman for Gov. Nikki Haley told The News, the federal government has failed to live up to long-standing promises to this state. Until it begins to fulfill those promises, there should be strong opposition to bringing any more of this dangerous waste to a facility the government seems willing to turn into a de facto nuclear waste dump. http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/opinion/editorials/2014/05/01/editorial-bring-nuclear-waste-srs/8578027/