Plutonium Shipment to Charleston, SC
Creates Fears

June 23, 2004

Charleston- A shipment of plutonium left over from the Cold War era could arrive here next month as part of a U.S.-Russian agreement to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons and convert them to power plant fuel.

Despite statements from federal officials that the shipment will be safe, activists fear it could become a terrorist magnet and pose an environmental threat.

The Department of Energy plans to ship the plutonium from the Charleston Naval Weapons Station to France in July or August, according to a federal document.

Federal officials said in recent filings that "the likelihood of an attempted act of sabotage or terrorism occurring is not precisely knowable," but that "the chance of success of any such attempt was judged to be very low."

In the federal filings, DOE officials said the agency "has taken a hard look at sabotage and terrorism and determined that adequate safeguards remain in place to meet such threats in the post-September 11 environment."

But anti-nuclear activists still are concerned.

"This shipment contains enough purified plutonium for 50 or more weapons of mass destruction," said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International. "If someone had an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) and blew a hole in it, it would have disastrous effects."

Terrorists could use a dirty bomb to disperse the plutonium into the environment, which would kill people close enough to ingest or inhale the radioactive particles, Clements said.

Plans call for the plutonium, stored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, to be shipped via armored trucks to the weapons station on the Cooper River.

From the weapons station, the plutonium would be loaded onto two armored oceangoing vessels bound for Cherbourg, France.

Once in France, the powered plutonium would be fabricated into mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, at a special nuclear facility. It then is expected to come back through Charleston bound for Duke Energy's Catawba reactor in York County.

The federal government plans to build a plant similar to the one in France at the federally owned Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina.

The United States and Russia have committed to disposing of 34 metric tons of plutonium in parallel programs, but delays on Russia's end have pushed back construction of the proposed plant at SRS.

Most of the groups opposed to building the MOX plant at SRS favor an alternate plutonium disposal process called immobilization, which involves encasing surplus plutonium in glass logs and storing it in underground vaults.