SRS Watch news, March 27, 202o: “While the Nation Rallies to Confront Virus, Savannah River Site Takes Eye Off the Threat and Focuses on Planning for New Nuclear Arms Race – Draft EIS on Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) at SRS Coming April 3”
SRS Watch Continues Demand for Preparation of Overarching “Programmatic” EIS (PEIS) before Preparation of Site-Specific EISs on Plutonium Pit Production, Lawsuit being Pondered by Groups
Columbia, South Carolina – In the midst of the concerted fight against the coronavirus, the U.S. Department of Energy confirms that it has lost sight of that national effort and is instead focusing on planning for nuclear war, including the proposed Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) at the Savannah River Site (SRS). DOE’s obsession to build new facilities for plutonium “pit” production for new and refurbished nuclear weapons poses a short-term threat in the face of the virus and a medium-term threat of a new nuclear arms race, according to the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch.
As the spread of the coronavirus was ramping up at a rapid pace, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) revealed on Thursday, March 26 that it had other priorities and is bent on moving forward with a new nuclear arms race and the proposed Plutonium Bomb Plant at SRS. On March 26, NNSA communicated the position that it has irresponsibly wandered from the COVID-19 fight and aims to release a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Plutonium Bomb Plant on April 3, followed by an “online public hearing” and a 45-day comment period.
The PBP would be located in the partially finished, ill-constructed plutonium fuel (MOX) plan at SRS, at a cost of up to $5 billion by 2030. The facility would make 50 or more plutonium “pits” – cores of nuclear weapons – per year, with the goal of aiding Los Alamos National Lab in replacing all pits in all 4000 new and refurbished nuclear weapons, with the dangerous goal to keep that stockpile through the end of the century. Additionally, a PBP at SRS would mean yet more plutonium brought into South Carolina, with the risk of it being stranded, and more chemical and nuclear waste at the site, diverting attention for the much-needed site clean-up, according to SRS Watch.
Text of NNSA message on March 26 concerning upcoming release of a draft EIS Plutonium Bomb Plant follows, with full news release:
SRS Watch news on draft Plutonium Bomb Plant EIS March 27 2020
Photo: MOX plant that DOE wants to turn into the $R$ Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP), by High Flyer