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DOE’s Office of Hearings and Appeals Compels the Savannah River Site to Release Key Documents Related to Failed Decade-Long Efforts to Import Highly Radioactive Spent Fuel from Germany

SRSW · October 24, 2023 ·

Emails Obtained from the Department of Energy via a Freedom of Information Act request Reveal Frantic Interactions with Germany in Misguided Attempt to Import Highly Radioactive Waste to DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, for Processing and Dumping

Internal U.S. Department of Energy email communication reveals that efforts to keep alive a decade-long scheme to import highly radioactive German spent fuel to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina were unsuccessful and the effort was terminated by German authorities. The termination of the project has been celebrated by those who support clean-up at SRS of waste created as a result of production of plutonium and other materials for nuclear weapons.

Emails from 2022 and 2023, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the non-profit organization Savannah River Site Watch, clearly show DOE officials and the company aiming to ship the material, Edlow International, frantically working to keep the faltering project alive and that they lacked an understanding of the political situation in Germany against the export.  DOE originally failed to provide the emails to SRS Watch in response to a FOIA request but SRS Watch appealed the lack of an “adequate search” to DOE’s Office of Hearings and Appeals and won, compelling release of the emails.

If the project had gone forward, a large amount of irradiated graphite fuel stored in 152 casks could have been dumped at SRS with the inexplicable cooperation of the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), the very office engaged in clean-up at the site. If this misguided EM effort had gone forward clean-up of the site could have been significantly complicated and delayed.

The failure of the effort to import the nuclear waste to SRS is lauded as an environmental victory by the non-profit organization Savannah River Site Watch. Likewise, the project’s failure to develop a reprocessing technique to remove uranium from the irradiated graphite fuel is positive from a nuclear non-proliferation perspective.

“Boosters of the project were aiming to make financial hay from the scheme, which would have had the unacceptable outcome of more hard-to-manage nuclear waste being dumped at SRS,” said Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch. “We wish that to thank our German colleagues for their diligence in making sure the highly radioactive waste stays where it is currently located in Germany.”

The emails indicate that the media office at SRS was going to admit in a “comms plan” one of the reasons for termination of the project, but the explanation was quashed by a DOE official in headquarters who was desperately looking for a positive spin on the status of the failing project:

The Department of Energy has decided to stop contract negotiations for technology development and the potential acceptance and processing of German graphite-coated spent nuclear fuel spheres at the Savannah River Site. Moving forward with this effort would be inconsistent with current priorities to accelerate mission completion, minimize risks, reduce costs, and reduce EM’s long-term liability at Savannah River. A number of outstanding contract issues remain, and negotiations with the German nuclear research corporation Jülicher Entsorgungsgesellschaft für Nuklearanlagen mbH (JEN) have reached an impasse with further talks unlikely to change the respective positions on these issues. DOE will continue to welcome missions at Savannah River consistent with its goals and priorities.

In one of the emails obtained by SRS Watch, and dated October 19, 2022, JEN confirmed they were the ones who terminated the project and informed SRS about the decision. Those reasons include: illegality of export of the material from Germany, a decision to build a new storage facility where the waste is now stored, implementation of policies to minimize the risky transport of the material and failure by the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to develop a processing technique.

The emails obtained by SRS Watch and some other key documents are posted on the SRS Watch website:  https://srswatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/FOIA-German-document-list-on-SRS-Watch-Oct-23-2023.pdf

>> full SRS Watch news release, October 24, 2023: News failed German spent fuel import October 24 2023

Update, December 22, 2023:  More documents have been obtained from SRS in response to a new FOIA request to find out if employees of nuclear shipping company Edlow International officially or unofficially sanctioned to work of behalf of Savannah River National Lab to negotiate with the German Government or JEN concerning dump of the German graphite spent fuel at SRS. No documents indicating the status of Edlow employees have bee n provided, which make it appear their actions were of a free-lancing nature and perhaps to their own benefit:

FOIA response cover letter from SRS, dated November 16, 2023 and received December 11, 2023:

SRO-2023-01811-F Clements final letterlk Dec 11 2023 rcvd

Additional emails in response to the FOIA request above (SRO-2023-01811-F):

Emails Responsive to SRO-2023-01811-F rcv Dec 11 2023

THUS, we view that the work of SRS Watch over the past decade on the German spent fuel dumping issue, including meetings at the Juelich Research Center, with German government officials and with Bundestag members, is on equal footing with any contractors or private entities engaging in activities to dump the spent fuel at SRS.

Update, 5 January 2024:  parliamentary question by a SPD member to the Northrhine-Westfalia government affirms that the option to export the spent fuel in question to the US is dead:   the “… option was rejected due to safety and financial concerns.” See document (in German):  https://opal.landtag.nrw.de/portal/WWW/dokumentenarchiv/Dokument/MMD18-7623.pdf


Photos: outside Juelich research center, protesting proposed spent fuel export to SRS & yellow Castor casks containing AVR graphite spent fuel – the SRS Watch director has visited this storage facility at Juelich

Filed Under: SRS Watch News

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