DON’T DUMP ROCK FLATS ON SOUTH CAROLINA!
Public efforts to stop plutonium pit production at SRS have now reached 30 years old. Likewise, efforts to stop purification at SRS of plutonium for pits has reached the 30th anniversary. The fight against the bad idea of producing nuclear weapons pits (nuclear bomb triggers) at SRS goes on.
See attached report from 1991 on reasons the New Special Recovery Facility, built atop the H-Canyon reprocessing plant, should not be operated: New Special Recovery Facility for plutonium at SRS challenged by Greenpeace 1990 1991
That facility was secretly constructed and aimed to operate without meeting legal requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. The hoopla over the illegal steps to build and operate the facility resulted in it never starting up.
In 1991, when the contaminated Rocky Flats pit production site in Colorado was about to be permanently closed, citizens sponsored a billboard at the entrance of Rocky Flays stating DON’T DUMP ROCK FLATS ON SOUTH CAROLINA! That effort continues.
Efforts to stop conversion of the partially constructed plutonium fuel (MOX) plant into the SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant just got a boost with the South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) taking on the legal work aimed at stopping this unjustified, dangerous mission at SRS. (See news release from February 11, 2021: “Biden Administration Asked to Review Plutonium Pit Expansion Plans for Nuclear Weapons”
In its version of history in Savannah River Site at Fifty, DOE said this about the New Special Recovery Facility:
“The New Special Recovery Facility (NSR) was constructed to reprocess plutonium from the Hanford N Reactor and scrap for weapons-grade material. Located on Building 221-F, near the B Line, the facility was constructed at a cost of around $86 million. In 1992, when the facility was almost complete, it was suggested that it might not be opened, if only because there was simply no need for the plutonium that it would provide. To date, the NSR has not been used.”
DOE photo: The New Special Recovery Facility was located atop the F-Canyon reprocessing plant, adjacent to the FB-Line.