Taking Action: Governor Threatens to Bar U.S. Plutonium Shipments
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Source: Common Dreams
Published on Saturday, August 11, 2001 in the New York Times
Taking Action:
Governor Threatens to Bar U.S. Plutonium
Shipments
by David Firestone
ATLANTA, Aug. 10 � Charging that a large shipment of plutonium from nuclear weapons
may be on its way to permanent storage in his state rather than to the temporary stay
needed for processing, Gov. Jim Hodges has ordered the South Carolina Highway Patrol to
draw up plans for blocking the state's borders to federal trucks bearing it.
Mr. Hodges says the Bush administration has reneged on a plan worked out by the Clinton
administration to move the plutonium out of the Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., after
it is converted to power- plant fuel or encased in glass. Without a guarantee that the
radioactive material will eventually be moved out of the state, he said in an interview today,
he will "do whatever it takes" to keep it from coming in.
"I'll stand squarely in front of the trucks, if that's what it
takes to protect the health and safety of our people," he
said. "In the meantime, we've got a range of options,
including roadblocks. We are not going to be stuck with
permanent storage of plutonium in our state."
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In a memorandum released by his office, Mr. Hodges
ordered B. Boykin Rose, the state's public safety
director, to evaluate options for highway roadblocks, a
step that recalls Gov. Cecil D. Andrus's use of the
Idaho state police in 1988 to block shipments of nuclear
waste from the Navy to a processing plant in his state.
Mr. Hodges said a federal lawsuit was another option
being considered.
The Energy Department, which operates the Savannah
River Site, a nuclear processing and disposal complex, said it hoped to continue discussing
the issue with South Carolina officials to prevent confrontations at the border. Joe Davis, a
spokesman for the department, said Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham promised on a
visit to the complex this week that the plutonium would not be permanently stored in South
Carolina.
"We're committed to making sure that the materials that come into the state leave the
state," Mr. Davis quoted Mr. Abraham as saying.
But Mr. Hodges said that he was not satisfied with vague assurances and that he had not
been given a detailed plan on how the waste will be removed. If the government moves to
South Carolina all the plutonium that requires processing, he said, it will leave the state
isolated, because no other state will want the material back.
"We will be left holding the proverbial bag," the governor wrote in his memorandum.
The two sides cannot even agree on when the first shipment of more than 50 tons of
plutonium, from Rocky Flats, the shuttered Colorado nuclear weapons complex, will enter
South Carolina on its way to the Savannah River Site, about 20 miles downstream from
Augusta, Ga. Mr. Hodges said he believed that the trucks would begin coming in two
weeks, but Mr. Davis said there would be no shipments until this fall.
The plutonium at issue was left over from the production of nuclear weapons. In 1996, the
United States and Russia agreed to take equal amounts out of their nuclear stockpiles and
either convert it to fuel for nuclear power plants or encase it in radioactive glass to keep it
from being stolen.
But in May, citing budget pressures, the Bush administration said it would not yet begin the
expensive process of stabilizing the plutonium and encasing it in glass. Instead, officials
said, waste will be stored in containers at the South Carolina complex while the issue is
studied further.
That infuriated Mr. Hodges, who said the state had contributed enough to the nation's
nuclear program by allowing Savannah River to manufacture plutonium and tritium gas for
bombs as far back as 1952. The state has no intention of being the storage site for warhead
waste, he said, suggesting that it be stored instead in a state with many remote locations,
like Nevada.
The end of the cold war allowed the government to shut down the original five reactors at the
310-square- mile Savannah River complex, and now the only plutonium manufactured there
is used as batteries for space probes. But the site still plays an important role in storing
and processing spent fuel and other waste.
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The cost of processing the plutonium has grown sharply, however, precisely at a time when
the Bush administration is looking for ways to cut the budget of most agencies, including
the Energy Department. A confidential report from the department, made public on Thursday
by the private Nuclear Control Institute, said the cost of the 22-year plutonium disposal
program that resulted from the agreement with the Russians had now risen to $6.6 billion �
a 50 percent increase over a 1999 estimate.
Mr. Hodges, a Democrat, said politics did not play a role in his stand, and added that he did
not believe his state was being made a target for waste because he is a Democrat at a time
when Republicans are in the White House. This afternoon, in fact, one of his most bitter
political enemies, State Attorney General Charlie Condon, a Republican, issued a strong
statement of support for his position, pledging to work with him to keep the government from
forcing the state to accept nuclear waste.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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