Government will review SRS drum

Web posted Monday, January 15, 2001

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By Brandon Haddock
Staff Writer

It passed the physical challenges, such as being submerged in 30 feet of water, subjected to fires of 1,475 degrees Fahrenheit and dropped from heights of up to 30 feet - although that test took a couple of tries.

Click on graphic for larger image

Now, a shipping container that could bring tons of surplus plutonium to Savannah River Site faces one last hurdle: passing muster with the federal bureaucracy.

The U.S. Department of Energy is expected to decide by Wednesday whether to certify the container, dubbed the ``9975'' in federal jargon.

The date could be the most important one in the nuclear-weapons site's four-year, multimillion-dollar effort to design the container. The drum is integral to SRS' plans to treat more than 55 tons of surplus U.S. plutonium for disposal elsewhere.

``We feel that we have answered all the questions that the regulators have,'' said Allen Gunter, the plutonium program manager for the Energy Department's nuclear-materials program division at SRS. ``We've dropped it. We've submersed it. We've fire-tested it. The real bulk of certification, in our opinion, is through.''

The site has traveled a circuitous and expensive path to create the 9975, which, when the last of a planned 2,000 are produced, will have drained an estimated $14 million from the Energy Department's coffers.

SRS officials had to re-engineer the container's lid last year after it failed a 30-foot drop test. The setback was one reason why the site's top contractor, Westinghouse Savannah River Co., did not receive $1 million in bonus money it could have earned.

Most recently, the Energy Department's inspector general - an internal watchdog for the agency - blasted the department's efforts to design shipping containers for plutonium, the 9975 among them.

``As a result of not adequately integrating and managing its shipping container activities, the Energy Department has spent millions without having a shipping container suitable for some of its surplus fissile materials,'' inspectors stated in a report issued in November. Plutonium is a fissile material.

Inspectors blamed SRS delays in certifying the 9975 for the Energy Department's decision to skip treating some plutonium residues at SRS. Instead, the agency now plans to send the residues directly to a New Mexico repository from Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site in Colorado.

Mr. Gunter said the change was the result of financial concerns. Although the shift will cost the Energy Department at least $9.8 million during the next two years, it makes better sense to send the wastes directly to New Mexico, rather than treating them first at SRS, he said.

``When you look at it, it makes more sense to have direct disposal of the material,'' Mr. Gunter said. ``It's a cheaper, more direct route that doesn't create additional waste at SRS.''

But the changes worry observers already alarmed by the frequent delays in the Energy Department's shipping programs.

``They keep spending a lot of money on this, but they don't come up with any solutions or they change their minds too often,'' said Don Moniak, an Aiken resident and community organizer for Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, a group that monitors SRS activities. ``The Energy Department is way ahead of itself. It hasn't done the basic things necessary for its programs.

``If you can't ship materials, then you can't process them. These are the real fundamental things that have to be done right.''

Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409.

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