nuclear-news

During a hearing in federal court in Columbia, attorney Randy Lowell said that the law is clear that the government owes South Carolina millions of dollars in fees and also must remove plutonium from the state because the processing plant wasn’t operational on time.

“All of this is a problem of their own creation,” Lowell, representing the state, said during a 90-minute hearing.

South Carolina in February sued the U.S. Department of Energy over the mixed oxide fuel project at the Savannah River Site, a sprawling former nuclear weapons plant along the South Carolina-Georgia border. The multi-billion-dollar project was intended to help the United States fulfill an agreement with Russia to dispose of at least 34 metric tons apiece of weapons-grade plutonium, an amount that’s enough for about 17,000 nuclear warheads.

The plant is years behind schedule and billions over budget. Because the facility wasn’t operational by a Jan. 1, 2016, deadline, the federal government was supposed to remove 1 metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina or pay fines of $1 million a day — up to $100 million yearly — until either the facility meets production goals or the plutonium is taken elsewhere for storage or disposal.

Lowell argued that the government has given South Carolina repeated assurances that no plutonium would enter the state without a pathway out – like the production of mixed-oxide fuel, which would be sold to commercial power producers – thus keeping the state from being a permanent home for the materials.

But that hasn’t happened, Lowell said. He asserted that the government is in breach of the law governing the project.

“The whole purpose of the statute is to ensure that we are not the dumping ground,” he said.

Attorneys for the federal government argue that, while the mixed-oxide facility isn’t up and running, the Energy Department is already pursuing an alternate way to process the plutonium and send it out of state for permanent storage……..http://savannahnow.com/news/2016-06-30/judge-considers-nuclear-fuel-dispute-between-sc-energy-dept