AIKEN, S.C. (CN) - A proposal to ship "highly enriched" nuclear material from Germany to Joint Base Charleston and then transport to the Savannah River Site by rail, is being panned by a citizens group that says the plan is not in the best interest of the general public.
Last week, the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board voted 10-9 to oppose the shipment of 900 kilograms of uranium. Two members abstained.
The Savannah River Site in Aiken is owned and operated by the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Covering roughly 300 square miles in South Carolina counties abutting the Savannah River, its primary mission is to process and store nuclear materials and other hazardous wastes left over from the Cold War.
Given that mission, and the site's proximity to both the river and metropolitan areas like the cities of Augusta and Savannah, the facility touts its development and use of new technologies to improve handling of the materials.
In fact, on Friday, just three days after the advisory panel vote, the Savannah River Site released its annual assessment of its impact on the local environment, a report that says its impact on its neighbors has significantly diminished over time.
The facility based its contention on the near-constant sampling it does of air around its operation, and the routine sampling it does in the waters and soil it does in a significant portion of the Savannah River watershed.
The monitoring includes not just radiological testing, but also a range of other contaminants.
“We’re cleaning up legacy waste,” said Monte Volk, an SRS spokesperson. “We want to be good stewards of the environment. We work with the Savannah River National Lab to develop and deploy technology to improve our environmental methods and safely treat nuclear and hazardous wastes.
“The whole report is the Savannah River Site’s scope of work, in regards to its environmental management program,” Volk continued. “It lays out what we do, how we do it, and why.”
The Savannah River Site holds two permits under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, regulating its release of nonradiological pollutants into local bodies of water.
The program is administered by the S.C. Dept. of Health and Environmental Control, and covers a total of 63 locations where industrial wastewater or stormwater empties into the Savannah River or its tributary streams and creeks.
According to the Savannah River Site, it sampled these discharges 3,275 times in 2016, and of those, two samples exceeded the facility's permitted limits for nonradiological contaminants.
It attributed one of the violations to a lowering levels during the closure of ash basins. That resulted it an uptick of suspended solids at a filter site. It said the other violation was caused by seven inches of rainfall that fell just before a sampling was done.
When it comes to radiation, the Savannah River Site said tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is the biggest "contributor to the potential dose to the public."