by Don Moniak
July 28, 2022 (Updated November 5, 2022).
SRS Annually Converting Approximately 1/5 of a metric ton of Plutonium into a Waste Form.
DOE’s Rhetorical Duck and Cover Surrounding Savannah River Site Plutonium
Who is trying to keep more radioactive waste out of South Carolina? (hint: it is not Attorney General Alan Wilson)
July 26, 2022: Hilton Double Tree Hotel; Augusta, Georgia.
Citizen: “How much weapon grade plutonium is being downgraded and how many shifts are working on a regular basis?”
Government contractor: “I wont get into specifics but it is at magnitude of one hundred 3013 cans a year.”
The government contractor did not offer a “cans to kilograms” conversion.
The question was posed by citizen representative Narinda P.S. Malik, a retired former environmental compliance and quality assurance worker at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The answer was provided by Lee Sims, the “K-Area Complex Facility Manager.” K-Area is where plutonium is stored in thirty pound stainless steel “3013” containers, within larger four hundred pound “9975” shipping containers, which are stacked on pallets three high within Building 105-K in the former K Nuclear Reactor, several miles from the Savannah River.
In short, the approximately 11.5 tons of plutonium stored there is very gradually being converted to a waste form in a process called “Dilute and Dispose.” Plutonium is taken out of the 3013 cans; and anywhere from 175 to 400 grams is mixed with an “adulterant” containing a classified mix of materials, and placed into a “critical container overpack (COC). The COC’s are then stored pending shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Southeast New Mexico, where it is scheduled, barring preventative litigation, to be entombed in deep salt caverns over the objections of most New Mexican citizens. (1)
A 3013 can is the container holding plutonium (Pu) metal or oxide powder. There is an approximate average range of 3.0 to 3.5 kilograms (kg) of Pu in each can. At a rate of 100 cans per year, the amount of plutonium is approximately 300 to 350 kg a year, or about one-third of a metric ton. The first plutonium based nuclear explosives reportedly involved six kilograms of Pu. Today, only one kilogram of Pu is necessary for use in a nuclear explosive of mass destruction, although the general usage in modern weapons is three to five kg.
{Correction: On August 11, 2022, DOE Director of External Affairs provided this new information:
“Per our subject matter experts, we are working to reach steady state in the existing glovebox which we believe could be up to 500 Kg/year of plutonium. Currently throughput is around 100 3013s/year but continues to increase. The 3013 plutonium content varies as presented in the CAB meeting depending on the source of the material. We are processing a mixture of Fuels Grade and Weapons Grade material, and as such, the answer on a KG basis of Weapons Grade Pu is variable. The average for a 3013 stored in K-area presented in the email is incorrect. The average 3013 plutonium content in K-Area is 2.1 Kg.”
So a more correct answer to Mr. Malik’s question would be: “about 300 to 350 kilograms a year, or one-third of a ton.”
[Correction. The updated estimate is 210 kilograms, or 0.21 metric tons; or 0.23 U.S. tons).
DOE’s Rhetorical Duck and Cover Surrounding Savannah River Site
This question and answer exchange typified the dialogue held in a spacious conference room at the Hilton Double Tree Hotel in West Augusta, GA. The Hilton Double Tree is more than twenty miles upriver and upwind from the sprawling nuclear weapons materials production complex formerly known as the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Plant,, and referred to as the Savannah River Site (SRS) since 1990.(2)
The federal government was represented by the DOE-SRS’ Environmental Management (EM) office and its primary contractors (3). DOE is one of the bureaucratic descendants of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which had a long tradition of manipulating public perceptions with evasive, fuzzy answers to even the most pointed questions, a tradition continued to this day.
Citizens were represented by the Savannah River Site (SRS) Citizens Advisory Board (CAB or Board), an official federal advisory committee formed in the 1990s during a short-lived period of government “openness.” According to its mission statement, the SRS CAB “will provide” the DOE’s Assistant EM Secretary with “information, advice, and recommendations concerning issues affecting the EM program at SRS.”
Board meetings are dominated by presentations from DOE or its contractors. Each presentation is followed by a question and answer session, during which public questions and comments are now prohibited. However, citizens not seated on the CAB are actually encouraged to speak with with officials outside the meeting room, meaning the Board does not receive the benefit of answers to public inquiries. Only DOE, its contractors, or state or federal regulators can answer questions.
Unless it seeks information from another source, the Board must then use the contractor provided information to forward any advice and recommendations; which DOE can then accept or reject (3).
Candor was in even shorter supply during two presentations regarding storage and processing of 9.5 metric tons (MT) of plutonium “surplus” to U.S. military needs. This plutonium was shipped to SRS in the early 2000’s from various DOE nuclear explosives materials and parts production sites within its vast nuclear explosives and weapons production complex.
The Board has no authority to address the nuclear materials production and management side managed by DOE’s highly secretive National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA). NNSA officials are notoriously tight-lipped and, while certainly present, have minimal participation in CAB dialogue. So plutonium issues are and will be plagued by guarded discussions far more reminiscent of Cold War days than post Cold War “openness.”
The Board was informed that 5.5 MT of Pu is controlled by the NNSA and 4.0 MT is controlled by EM. Therefore, the Board could be privy to discussions about the future of storage and processing of surplus plutonium at SRS, but not to discussion involving production of new nuclear explosive parts called “plutonium pits.”
The 9.5 MT of plutonium is the amount to be removed from SRS by 2037 under the terms of an August 31, 2020 legal settlement between the State of South Carolina (the State) and the DOE (4). The highlight of the settlement was a $600,000,000 (six hundred million) payment to the State, to be divided up in any manner proscribed by the state’s legislature. The root cause of the settlement is DOE’s history of misinformation and bait and switch tactics that ultimately led to, in the words of the SC Attorney General’s office:
“The highly contentious a battle that involved multiple federal and state administrations and threatened to paralyze the country’s (nuclear weapons) industrial complex and pit the state against the federal government for decades.” (“Nuclear weapons” added for clarity, since the overall military industrial complex as well as general industry was not threatened in any way by the battle over plutonium storage and disposition.)
This battle also led the state’s top elected officials to increasingly (and cynically) portray South Carolina as a plutonium dumping ground—a term first coined in 2002 by former Governor Jim Hodges. Although above ground plutonium storage within robust, sealed containers within hardened nuclear facilities was approved for up to 50 years at SRS in a legal 1997 DOE record of decision (ROD), Attorney General Alan Wilson stated:
“This settlement is the single largest settlement in South Carolina’s history. It is important to me that the people of South Carolina know of our long-term commitment to preventing South Carolina from becoming a dumping ground for nuclear waste”
Who is trying to keep more radioactive waste out of South Carolina? (hint: it is not Attorney General Alan Wilson)
In spite of the record six hundred million dollar payment and the threat of future litigation, DOE and its contractors continue to evade questions and refrain from offering any more information than it deems necessary. Neither the SC Attorney General’s Office or Governor was present at the meeting. It was not until the public comment period at 4 p.m., nearly two hours after the plutonium presentations, that citizen and long-time nuclear watchdog Tom Clements informed the Board about an issue in which they had been uninformed:
“The number was given as 9.5 MT in the agreement with the state. But there is 11.5 ton onsite because 2.0 tons were already there. But the amount of plutonium to be disposed of is up to 34 tons….We are looking at a tremendous amount of plutonium coming into the site. The CAB will have a very important role in insuring more material is not stranded here.”
Even when a simple, direct question cutting to an essential safety and environmental matter is posed, DOE and its contractors offer a minimal of information. A prime example involved the exchange between Board member Kandace Cave, who also serves as Aiken County’s Keep Aiken County Beautiful program coordinator, and K-Area manager Lee Sims from the contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS). Ms. Cave asked:
“Is there a difference in how you treat weapons grade plutonium versus other plutonium?”
The question was in reference to the fact that of the 9.5 tons, “about 1/3 of the inventory contains fuel grade plutonium (higher radiation dose and heat load).”
Mr. Sims answered:
“We do have some of our higher dose material stored separately, but there is a mixture” of materials being processed.”
Omitted from that partial answer was the presence of Americium-241, a radioactive decay product of Plutonium-241; which in turn is present at single digit percentages in militarily preferred “weapons-grade” plutonium, and in double digit percentages in weapons-usable, “fuel-grade” plutonium. Americium-241 is an intense gamma radiation emitter with a radioactive half-life of seventy five years and is considered one hundred times more toxic than plutonium-239.
Weapons plutonium was routinely purified to eliminate americium, which of course produced stockpiles of it, some of which went into consumer products like smoke detectors as part of the nation’s “Atoms For Peace” program. Since plutonium decay has been allowed to run its course since 1990, Americium-241 levels in plutonium stored in weapons, and at DOE sites like SRS have steadily increased but still not peaked.
There is no mention of Americium-241 in either of the two plutonium storage and processing handouts, no mention made during the presentations, and no mention made during an eight minute promotional You Tube video about K-Area shown to the Board.
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Next Up in “Offsite Insights:”
More Pu Duck and Cover
Keeping German Nuclear Waste Out of South Carolina
Barnwell and Allendale Counties: Downriver, Downwind, and Unfeasible for Public Meetings
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(1) Presentation material for 3013 Cans and K Area Storage and Processing:
A DOE presentation to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018 provides more details:
(2) The name changed when the DuPont corporation pulled up its stakes at the end of the Cold War after a nearly forty year run as the operating contractor, first for the AEC then for its successor the Department of Energy (DOE). Since the year 2000, the nuclear weapons branch of DOE has been ruled by the “semi-autonomous” National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA). The NNSA certifies the reliability and safety of the nuclear weapons it delivers to Department of Defense.
(3) The primary contractors at present are Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC) and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS).
(4) For more information on the SRS CAB and its mission, go to:
https://cab.srs.gov/srs-cab.html
SRS CAB meeting second half July 26, 2022
(4) For more information on the Plutonium Settlement including links to the Settlement, see: