The state of Nevada asked a federal judge to bar the Department of Energy from shipping a metric ton of plutonium to the state, potentially throwing a wrench in the agency’s plans to comply with an order from another federal judge to move the material out of South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020.
Nevada sued the Department of Energy (DoE) Friday in the District Court for Nevada, asking District Judge Miranda Du and Magistrate Judge Carla Baldwin Carry to enjoin DoE “from shipping (or directing any other entity to ship) all or any part of the one metric ton (about 2,200 pounds) of plutonium … which is located in the State of South Carolina, in and through Nevada to the DoE’s Nevada Nuclear Security Site (NNSS).”
Last year, a federal judge in the South Carolina district court ordered DoE to remove one metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina by New Years’ Day 2020 after the agency failed to turn the material into commercial reactor fuel using the site’s now-cancelled — and unfinished — Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
DoE first said it would be impossible to move the material out of South Carolina so quickly. However, the agency subsequently hit on a solution: reclassifying one metric ton of the plutonium in South Carolina as “for defense-production use.”
Reclaiming the plutonium for weapons programs — the material wound up in South Carolina for disposal because it was previously declared surplus to U.S. defense needs — would allow DoE to fast-track the metal back to the Los National Laboratory to help produce new fissile warhead cores called plutonium pits.
However, because storage space in the nuclear security enterprise is limited, and because Los Alamos is not yet ready to begin pit production, DoE in July told the judge in South Carolina that the metric ton of non-pit plutonium would have to stop over in the Pantex Facility near Amarillo, Texas, and possibly also the Nevada National Security Site.
Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who lost his seat in the election last month, and the state of Nevada immediately cried foul, vowing to do anything in their power to stop DoE from moving weapon-usable plutonium into the state.
Anything, it transpired, included an appeal to the judiciary.
The Department of Energy had not responded to Nevada’s complaint at deadline Monday for Defense Daily.