Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette announced a legal settlement on Monday between the Trump administration and South Carolina on the removal of 9.5 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium from the state.
The agreement calls for the federal government to make an upfront payment of $600 million to resolve a long-running legal dispute over cleaning up radioactive material stored in South Carolina. In return, South Carolina agreed to hold off on bringing new lawsuits against the Energy Department for removal of the plutonium. South Carolina sued three years ago, seeking to force the agency to remove the plutonium or to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
“The Trump administration is committed to tackling our nation’s toughest challenges where previous administrations have failed, including the removal and disposal of Cold War-era plutonium from the state of South Carolina,” Brouillette said ahead of a visit to the state on Monday to announce the agreement with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Rep. Joe Wilson, among other officials.
The disputed waste is a product of a Cold War-era nuclear weapons manufacturing site near the Savannah River. The Energy Department originally planned to turn the material into mixed oxide fuel for reuse in nuclear power reactors.
But in 2018, the Trump administration ended construction of the plant, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, after delays and cost overruns. The plant was partially constructed over the course of a decade, costing billions in taxpayer dollars. Instead, the administration said, diluting and disposing of the plutonium would be cheaper than reprocessing it into nuclear fuel.
Under the agreement, the federal government projects it will completely remove the 9.5 metric tons of waste from South Carolina by 2037. After processing the waste into a safer form, the Energy Department intends to ship most of the material to be stored in a disposal ground in rural New Mexico. The Trump administration previously backtracked on a plan to store some of the material in Nevada after Democrats in Congress accused then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry of secretly trucking some of the plutonium there without being transparent about the details.
