Nuclear watchdogs, scientists question need for SC plutonium plant amid environmental study
The Savannah River Site has a total of 51 waste tanks. Eight of those tanks have been operationally closed. (From Savannah River Site fact sheet, May 2022, U.S. Department of Energy)
South Carolina's federal nuclear site is part of a plan to replace the plutonium cores of bombs in the country's nuclear arsenal. But now the federal government is taking a closer look at the environmental impacts of such a venture — or whether it's even necessary.
A $25 billion factory planned for the Savannah River Nuclear Site in western South Carolina would mean new investment and lots of new jobs for the area — an estimated 1,000 new positions over the next several years.
But anti-nuclear and environmental groups sued in 2021 saying the U.S. Department of Energy, the federal agency that manages the country's nuclear stockpile, didn't follow national environmental law in developing its plans and failed to account for disposal of excess radioactive material.
In a settlement in January, the government agreed to redo the necessary study.
The public has until July 14 to weigh in on the scope and factors they think the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department's nuclear arm, should consider in its review.
'A rushed program will likely increase the risks to the workers and frontline communities who bear still unaddressed burdens from the production of nuclear weapons during the Cold War,' Dylan Spaulding, senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a recent report.
The Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration did not respond to emails sent by the SC Daily Gazette.
3 SC colleges could split $120M to educate students for jobs at nuclear laboratory
Plutonium decays over centuries. The recycling of spheres of plutonium, called pits, used in nuclear weapons has become a priority over the past couple decades as the country's nuclear stockpile has aged. In response, scientists at Savannah River, as well as those at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, have been charged with salvaging usable plutonium from old pits and recycling it into new ones.
Savannah River was expected to make 50 pits per year by 2030, though that timeline was considered ambitious to begin with. It likely will be further delayed by the legal settlement, which halted some of the proposed construction work and equipment installation.
The 310-square-mile complex, known to locals as the 'bomb plant,' produced weapons-grade plutonium and tritium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal from the 1950s through the end of the Cold War and nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia.
All radioactive production at the site that covers parts of Barnwell, Aiken, and Allendale counties ceased in 1992, when its mission shifted to cleanup and research.
Federal scientists have said they have no way of knowing how long the nuclear weapons pits will remain usable. But the Union of Concerned Scientists argues new pits aren't necessary to maintain the existing U.S. nuclear fleet.
'The claim that we need new pits just to maintain a safe and reliable arsenal just doesn't hold water,' Spaulding wrote. 'The reality is NNSA has thousands of existing plutonium pits in reserve and should investigate options for re-use before one more pit is produced.'
Tom Clements, director of Savannah River Site Watch, is a longtime nuclear watchdog whose organization helped bring the federal lawsuit against the pit program. He also pointed to statements in the NNSA's own study of pit aging, which says plutonium pits have reliable lifetimes of at least 100 years.
The average age of the country's current pits is now around 42 years.
'While public rationales for the program often emphasize a need to replace aging pits, the national laboratories have offered no evidence that the nation's existing pits are anywhere near the end of their service lives,' Spaulding wrote. 'Moreover, the national laboratories can use existing capabilities to monitor any potential for aging effects without reviving pit production.'
Both Clements and the Union of Concerned Scientists are calling for a new independent assessment of pit lifetimes, an inventory of existing pits, as well as an assessment of all potential pit recycling and waste disposal sites, beyond those just considering Savannah River and Los Alamos.
Defense package includes $2.7B for SRS in 2024
South Carolina has long wrestled with tons of weapons-grade plutonium that have accumulated at Savannah River, suing in 2016 over the federal government's inability to meet deadlines for its promised removal.
Much of the surplus plutonium from sites across the country was brought to South Carolina in 2002 and stored inside the reactor that once produced the radioactive metal.
It was supposed to be turned into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors — mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX — as part of a nonproliferation agreement with Russia in 2000. But with the plant to convert the plutonium years behind schedule and billions over budget, the Obama administration tried repeatedly to scrap it. However, South Carolina's delegation balked, and Attorney General Alan Wilson sued, keeping the project going.
The fatal blow came from the Trump administration, which continued with his predecessor's plans, and another effort by South Carolina officials to revive the project failed. The project was officially terminated in 2018.
That left 11.5 metric tons of plutonium underground at SRS, enough to build the bomb dropped on Nagasaki nearly 2,000 times over, The Post and Courier reported.
A $600 million settlement with the state in fall 2020 gave the U.S. Department of Energy an additional 15 years, until 2037, to get rid of all the plutonium it shipped to SRS. Even if doesn't, South Carolina can't sue again until 2042, as per the settlement's terms.
The proposed pit production factory is meant to be developed at the site of that failed fuels plant.
The state already has invested heavily to prepare for the future of both the Savannah River Site and its associated national laboratory.
Last year, the Legislature allocated $60 million in the budget to fund faculty, student scholarships, lab upgrades and a control room simulator at the University of South Carolina, Clemson University and South Carolina State University, as well as a workforce center at USC's four-year campus in Aiken.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
21 hours ago
- Newsweek
Americans Detained After Trying to Send Over 1,000 Bibles to North Korea
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Six Americans were initially detained on Friday in South Korea for trying to throw more than a thousand plastic bottles filled with food, religious texts, money, and USB sticks in the sea to be carried to North Korea, the Associated Press reported. Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul for comment via email on Sunday. Why It Matters The use of propaganda balloons dates back to the Korean War and continued through the Cold War. Activists in North and South Korea extensively used these methods to disseminate psychological messages across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two neighbors, which are technically still at war given a peace treaty hasn't been signed since the end of major hostilities in 1953. Over the years, activists have sent leaflets critical of North Korea's government and USB sticks filled with information and South Korean pop music over into North Korea, while North Korea has sent balloons carrying trash over. What To Know The Americans, who local outlet Yonhap, reported ranged in age from their 20s to 50s, were apprehended on Friday from a restricted area on Ganghwa Island near the North Korean border. They were first spotted by military patrol and then handed over to the police. The group was reportedly attempting to throw around 1,600 plastic bottles filled with rice, miniature Bibles, $1 bills and USB sticks into restricted waters in hopes they would drift into North Korea, according to the AP. Police told the outlet that the Americans are being investigated, and it is not yet clear what is on the USB sticks. They were originally suspected of violating the country's disasters and safety act, according to Reuters, which restricts activities in "risk zones," near the border. Yonhap said the police did not find the need to further detain the individuals and released them. According to the 2020 World Christian Database, over half of the population in North Korea agnostic, with around 15 percent atheist, and less than 1 percent Christian. Years ago, the South Korean parliament approved legislation that criminalized flying propaganda leaflets towards North Korea. But in 2023, the country's Constitutional Court struck it down, arguing it restricted free speech. Earlier in June, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung suspended various anti-North Korea broadcasts and balloon shipments in an effort to calm tensions between the neighboring countries. The arrest comes just two weeks after police detained an activist for flying balloons off the island with the hopes to make it to North Korea. Last summer, Fighters for a Free North Korea, a South Korean activist group, reportedly sending 300,000 leaflets, 5,000 USB drives, and 3,000 U.S. $1 bills. Over the course of four months, between May to November last year, North Korea reportedly flew about 7,000 balloons towards South Korea in 32 separate instances, according to the AP. North Korean defectors fill empty plastic bottles with rice and face masks to send them toward North Korea by balloons in Seoul on June 18, 2020. North Korean defectors fill empty plastic bottles with rice and face masks to send them toward North Korea by balloons in Seoul on June 18, 2020. AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon What People Are Saying South Korea's Defense Ministry said earlier in June that the president's decision to shut down loudspeakers broadcasting anti-North Korea propaganda was part of efforts "to restore trust in inter-Korean relations and promote peace on the Korean Peninsula." What Happens Next It appears that the Americans have been released but may still under investigation.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Boston Globe
With Supreme Court ruling, another check on Trump's power fades
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind. Advertisement Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. Advertisement But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the 'imperial presidency.' Presidential power waned in the 1970s, in the period encompassing the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. Courts proved willing to rule against the presidency, as when the Supreme Court forced President Richard Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Members of both parties worked together to enact laws imposing new or restored limits on the exercise of executive power. But the present era is very different. Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And now Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall. The decision by the Supreme Court's conservative majority comes as other constraints on Trump's power have also eroded. The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors general and sidelining the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders. And Congress, under the control of Trump's fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits, and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorized and appropriated. Advertisement Last week, when Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorization from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war. Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Massie's political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, recently told her constituents that 'we are all afraid' of Trump. While the immediate beneficiary of the Supreme Court's ruling is Trump, the decision also promises to free his successors from what has been a growing trend of district court intervention into presidential policymaking. In the citizenship case, the justices stripped district court judges of the authority to issue so-called universal injunctions, a tool that lower courts have used to block government actions they deem most likely illegal from taking effect nationwide as legal challenges to them play out. The frequency of such orders has sharply increased in recent years, bedeviling presidents of both parties. Going forward, the justices said, lower courts may only grant injunctive relief to the specific plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits. That means the Trump administration may start enforcing the president's birthright citizenship order in the 28 states that have not challenged it, unless individual parents have the wherewithal and gumption to bring their own lawsuits. The full scope of the ruling remains to be seen given that it will not take effect for 30 days. It is possible that plaintiffs and lower-court judges will expand the use of class-action lawsuits as a different path to orders with a nationwide effect. Such an option, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, would be proper so long as they obey procedural limits for class-action cases. Advertisement Still, in concurring opinions, two other key members of the conservative bloc, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, warned lower-court judges not to lower standards for using alternative means to issue sweeping orders in an effort to circumvent the ruling. Alito wrote that 'district courts should not view today's decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors' of legal rules. Thomas added that if judges do not 'carefully heed this court's guidance' and act within limits, 'this court will continue to be 'duty bound' to intervene.' In a rare move that signaled unusually intense opposition, Justice Sonia Sotomayor read aloud a summary of her dissenting opinion from the bench Friday. Calling the ruling a grave attack on the American system of law, she said it endangered constitutional rights for everyone who is not a party to lawsuits defending them. 'Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship,' she wrote. 'Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief.' Sotomayor also said the administration did not ask to entirely halt the multiple injunctions against its order because it knew the directive was patently illegal, and accused the majority of playing along with that open gamesmanship. She, like the other two justices who joined her dissent, is a Democratic appointee. Advertisement All six of the justices who voted to end universal injunctions were Republican appointees, including three Trump installed on the bench in his first term. The same supermajority has ruled in ways that have enhanced his power in other avenues. Last year, the bloc granted Trump presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts as president. The ruling, by Chief Justice John Roberts, asserted that presidents have absolute immunity for anything they do with the Justice Department and their supervision of federal law enforcement power. Emboldened, Trump this year has built on his approach from his first term, when he informally pressured prosecutors to investigate his political foes. He has issued formal orders to scrutinize specific people he does not like, shattering the post-Watergate norm of a Justice Department case independent from White House political control. The supermajority also has blessed Trump's gambit in firing Democratic members of independent agency commissions before their terms were up. The conservative justices have made clear that they are prepared to overturn a long-standing precedent allowing Congress to establish specialized agencies to be run by panels whose members cannot be arbitrarily fired by presidents. In a separate concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a realpolitik take. The majority's exegesis of what powers Congress understood itself to be granting lower courts when it created them in 1789 was a smokescreen of mind-numbing 'legalese,' she wrote, obscuring the question of whether a court can order the executive branch to follow the law. 'In a constitutional republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the executive to follow the law — and it must,' she wrote before striking a cautionary note. Advertisement 'Everyone, from the president on down, is bound by law,' she added. 'By duty and nature, federal courts say what the law is (if there is a genuine dispute), and require those who are subject to the law to conform their behavior to what the law requires. This is the essence of the rule of law.' But Barrett accused her of forgetting that courts, too, must obey legal limits. 'Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary,' Barrett wrote. 'No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law. But the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation — in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so.' This article originally appeared in
3 days ago
Former Montana US Rep Pat Williams, who won a liberal- conservative showdown, dies at 87
HELENA, Mont. -- Pat Williams, a New Deal-style Democrat who won Montana's great liberal-conservative showdown of 1992 to become the state's lone voice in the U.S. House of Representatives, died Wednesday. He was 87. Williams died in Missoula of natural causes, family spokesperson Matt McKenna said Thursday. John Patrick Williams represented the western half Montana from 1979 to 1997. When the 1990 census eliminated one of two House seats the state held since 1912, Williams captured the new statewide district in a bruising race against the longtime eastern-district representative, Republican Ron Marlenee. The 51% majority was the slimmest of Williams' congressional career — and the first election defeat in Marlenee's 16-year career. The matchup was billed as a classic liberal-conservative confrontation and a microcosm of political battles being waged throughout the West over control of the land and its resources. It was a bitter, hard-fought contest — each man spent more than $1 million — and Williams said quickly after his victory that he would work to bring the state together. Williams first tried for the congressional seat in 1974, but he lost to fellow Democrat Max Baucus. Williams was elected to the post in 1978 when Baucus moved to the U.S. Senate. By the time of the face-off with Marlenee, Williams was a deputy whip in the House. He was an unabashed liberal, a staunch advocate for organized labor and a believer in the potential of government to help people. That won him the enmity of conservative groups such as Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. Williams defended the National Endowment for the Arts against pornography charges and opposed proposed constitutional amendments to outlaw abortion and flag desecration and to require a balanced budget. He opposed U.S. military intervention in the 1991 Gulf War and wanted post-Cold War defense savings to be used for public works projects. Williams tried to take a middle road in one of Montana's most divisive issues, wilderness, and environmental groups generally gave him strong support. He said the argument of jobs versus the environment presented a false choice because the state could not have one without the other. 'A clean environment ... has been and will be an absolute cash register for this state,' he said in 1992. His family said in a statement that Williams spent his life protecting wild lands and defending the working poor, arts, Native people and children with disabilities. 'He believed government could be a force for good, and that culture, wilderness, and education were not luxuries — but rights,' the statement said. After he left the House in 1997, Williams started teaching at the University of Montana, including courses in environmental studies, history and political science. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte recalled Williams as a 'dedicated public servant.' 'As Montana's longest-serving congressman, Pat championed Montana's interests, working to find common ground for nearly 20 years in Washington,' Gianforte said. Williams' wife, Carol, was the first woman to become minority leader in the state Senate. They have a son Griff, and two daughters, Erin and Whitney. Williams' cousin was daredevil Evel Knievel. Williams received a bachelor's degree from the University of Denver and a teaching degree from Western Montana College. Born Oct. 30, 1937, in Helena, Williams grew up in the mining city of Butte, and its traditionally Democratic unionized workforce was a major element of his power base. He taught in the Butte public schools for seven years, and the combination earned him a spot on the House Education and Labor Committee. Williams served in the Montana House in the 1967 and 1969 sessions. In 1968 he headed the Montana presidential campaign for Hubert Humphrey. He did the same in 1976 for Jimmy Carter. Williams got a firsthand look at Washington, D.C., from 1969 to 1971 when he worked as executive assistant to Montana Democratic U.S. Rep. John Melcher. Williams returned to Montana in 1971 and spent seven years as state head of the federally funded Montana Family Education Program, a career program for disadvantaged people. Williams will lie in state at the Montana State Capitol in Helena on Wednesday and Thursday.
