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SRS can’t handle
all of nation’s surplus plutonium, study says
Congressional arm reports any plan to consolidate the
material at the Aiken site should wait
By LAUREN MARKOE
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON —
Tentative plans to consolidate the nation’s surplus plutonium at the
Savannah River Site should be put on hold, a congressional study
released Friday concludes. The Aiken nuclear campus couldn’t safely
store and monitor the 50 metric tons of plutonium now at various
nuclear sites around the country, according to the study by the
Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
Environmentalists agree with the report’s conclusion but say it
shouldn’t have taken Congress so long to take notice of the nation’s
serious plutonium storage problem. “It has already been a decade
since the program to dispose of surplus weapons plutonium began, and
the Department of Energy still hasn’t developed a workable plan to
handle this deadly material,” said Tom Clements, an independent
nuclear consultant and former senior adviser to Greenpeace
International. The U.S. Department of Energy plans to eventually
deposit this spent nuclear fuel at the deep nuclear vault at Yucca
Mountain, Nev. But construction of the vault has faced serious
delays and is not expected to open before 2012. Until it is ready,
Energy Department officials have argued it would be safer and more
economical to gather plutonium at one location — SRS. The department
has indicated the waste could be stored there for up to 50 years.
But GAO investigators say much would have to change for that to
happen. Among their reasons: nþFederal law prohibits shipments of
plutonium to SRS until the Energy Department completes a plan to
change the waste into a form in which it can be permanently
disposed. nþMuch of the plutonium identified for storage at SRS is
in the form of 12-foot-long fuel rods. SRS can handle only
containers of plutonium waste. nþThe storage facility that would be
used does not have adequate fire protection, ventilation or
monitoring capabilities to detect whether the stored waste is
becoming unstable. The Department of Energy, given a draft of the
report earlier this summer, did not dispute its basic recommendation
— that the department develop a comprehensive strategy for storing
excess plutonium and that it review its current cleanup plans. Such
a strategic plan is being developed, said Charles E. Anderson, the
department’s principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental
management. In December 2003, another government agency — the
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board — raised similar concerns
about the Department of Energy’s plans to consolidate plutonium at
SRS. Kevin Bishop, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,
said the GAO report does not seem to break much ground. Bishop said
Graham and the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., assured that
federal law prohibits the permanent storage at SRS of plutonium that
would be turned into nuclear fuel. One of SRS’ missions is to
recycle spent weapons-grade nuclear fuel into commercial fuel for
use in nuclear reactors. Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or
lmarkoe@krwashington.com |
