Plutonium could go to New Mexico next year. It will come from the Savannah River Site.

Nov. 20—A tranche of processed and packaged plutonium will likely be trucked from the Savannah River Site to a salt mine-like repository in New Mexico for entombment next year, officials close to the process have said.

The shipment of plutonium, adulterated to impede proliferation and other risks, is planned for summer 2022, according to Jason Armstrong, the National Nuclear Security Administration's manager at the Savannah River Site. Wyatt Clark, an executive with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the Savannah River Site management team, has similarly said the target is "the late spring, early summer."

"We will be sending plutonium out," he told members of an advisory board this week, "via this pathway at that time."

The anticipated expedition marks another step — however small — toward the elimination of a plutonium cache in South Carolina, a galvanizing issue for lawmakers in the Palmetto State and Washington, alike. In remarks last year, S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson emphasized his team's "long-term commitment to preventing South Carolina from becoming a dumping ground for nuclear waste."

Metric tons of plutonium, a toxic metal used in nuclear weapons, are stored at the Savannah River Site, a Department of Energy complex south of Aiken. Chipping away at the stockpile, Clark said Monday, "has been a significant focus for us, as you would expect with the politics."

Preparing the material for burial at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeast New Mexico is no simple or centralized task; Armstrong last month told S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster's nuclear advisers it's an "extensive effort to get our material over there and get it underground."

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Amentum-led WIPP management team, would not comment on the potential shipment Friday.

From here to there

The transportation of nuclear waste and other radioactive materials is safe and stringently regulated, said Jim Marra, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, a local nonprofit.

"You'd be shocked how much spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear wastes are shipped around the country every day," he said in a Friday interview.

To describe how wastes are prepared and packed, Marra used a nesting doll analogy.

"The packages that are used to ship plutonium, for instance, include several layers of packaging," the executive director explained. "And the package with several layers then goes into a cask that has been" stress tested time and again.

"They've been tested for drops and impacts," Marra said. "They get tested for fires."

Tom Clements, the director of Savannah River Site Watch, on Thursday said the cross-country disposal operations and related ventures — like the National Nuclear Security Administration's Surplus Plutonium Disposition Project, potentially wrapping in fiscal year 2026 — "merit close monitoring."

And while Clements is sure "DOE and South Carolina will celebrate" the shipment as a "significant step towards reducing the material stockpile," he worries programs are charging ahead despite lingering questions about WIPP, the nation's only repository for transuranic waste, contaminated tools and clothes and debris.

"I don't think they have it all worked out yet," the Columbia-based watchdog said in an interview.

It's an argument that resonates with Don Hancock, the director of the nuclear waste program at the Southwest Research and Information Center in New Mexico.

"We will not be surprised if it happens," Hancock said of the recently publicized plans. "We will also not be surprised if it's delayed."

A National Academies analysis published last year concluded plans to dispose of processed plutonium at WIPP were viable, but a handful of vulnerabilities needed addressing. A National Nuclear Security Administration spokesperson at the time said the myriad recommendations made in the study would be "thoroughly evaluated" and considered.

Hancock predicted that as plutonium shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant continue — as they are expected for decades to come — local opposition will grow.

"If the shipments happen next summer, whenever, people shouldn't think" they're home free, he said. "It raises concerns as a precursor for what DOE intends to do later."

The Santa Fe New Mexican on Oct. 20 reported that activists and officials were concerned about a "plutonium shipping plan" specifically involving the Savannah River Site.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant had received more than 13,000 shipments as of Nov. 13, according to a tracker on its website. The figure includes 1,683 shipments from the Savannah River Site.