NNSA Gobsmacked Over Losing Control of Plutonium-Shipment News – Allegiance to Nuclear Security Summit PR Rather than Transparency with the Public Catches Officials Flat Footed – Plutonium-Shipment Cat Jumps Out of the DOE Nuclear Bag as NNSA Maintains a Bumbling Silence
Swiss Government Forced to Admit Shipment of 20 Kilograms (44 Pounds) of Plutonium to the United States – to US DOE’s Savannah River Site, in Advance of Nuclear Security Summit
As SRS Watch has publicized for Over a Month, the Shipment Took Place on the UK-Flagged Ship Oceanic Pintail, which Discharged its Cargo in Charleston, SC on February 15; Pintail Arrived in its Home Port of Barrow-in-Furness, England on February 29 (see photos above, ©Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment – CORE)
Statement of Swiss Government: “Transport von aufgelösten Plutoniumlager des Bundes in die USA ist erfolgt” linked here:
https://www.news.admin.ch/message/index.html?lang=de&msg-id=60791
Columbia, SC – After much publicity and government secrecy over the past month about a plutonium shipment from Germany and Switzerland to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS), the Swiss government has formally admitted that the shipment took place.
In a news release forced out of the government by public interest groups, the Swiss have admitted that 20 kilograms of plutonium from the Paul Scherrer Institut were shipped to the U.S. in January/February 2016.
“This admission is a victory for nuclear non-proliferation, transparency and contributes to the increasingly difficult discussion about the fate of yet more plutonium being imported to the Savannah River Site,” according to Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch. “As the US Government has refused to talk about the arrival of this plutonium at SRS and deployed a secrecy-for-secrecy’s-sake strategy, it fell to public interest groups to alert the public that more plutonium was being brought into SRS without any disposition path out of the site.”