I have discussed my concerns about the impact of financial problems on nuclear safety in the United States. I have recently spent a lot of blog posts on problems involving civilian nuclear reactors in the United States but I have also mentioned and posted links about problems at governmental installation such as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The Savannah River Site is a United States nuclear reservation twenty five miles southeast of Savannah, Georgia. The site was developed after World War II to refine nuclear materials that would be used to build nuclear weapons. The site is owned by the United States government and managed by a group of corporations. The great deal of the work currently being done at the site involves the cleanup of waste and pollution related to the work done for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. None of the reactors on the site are operating but two of the reactor buildings are being used to store nuclear materials. The site also includes the only radiochemical separation facility in the U.S. as well as the only tritium production facility in the U.S. Currently, they are constructing what will be the only mixed oxide fuel plant in the U.S. which will be able to convert nuclear weapons grade plutonium into fuel for commercial reactors. Both the clean up and production work at Savannah River are important for the United States weapons program and the U.S. civilian nuclear industry.
The United States Congress drafted a plan to cut federal spending commonly referred to as the “sequester” back in 2012 during fierce partisan budget battles. The idea was that there would be a future date set for broad cuts mandated across a range of programs if a more agreeable budget could not be drafted by the deadline. The assumption was that since all sides of the argument would lose if the sequester was implemented, they would have sufficient incentive to come to some bipartisan agreement on a better budget by the deadline. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be true. For a variety of reasons, a better budget was never agreed to and the sequester was implemented. The Republicans decried cuts to the defense budget and Democrats focused on cuts to the nation’s safety net for the poor. Buried in the sequester is a cut that has not gotten much press but is very worrisome.
Under the sequester, the funding for the Savannah River Site has been cut by one hundred million dollars. There will be a loss of about one thousand workers which is about ten percent of the workforce. In addition, the scope of work will be narrowed. Because Savannah River is so important and cuts to their budget could endanger public safety, the Department of Energy is trying to shift about eighty millions dollars from other projects. However, this is not a simple process. Such shifting of funds is called “reprogramming” and it requires Congressional approval. DOE and the Office of Management and Budget are working on getting a proposal to two committees in the Senate and two committees in the House. The proposal is bundled along with a batch of measures for funding other nuclear facilities such as Hanford, Idaho National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge. The set of funding proposals has not made any progress since March 18th. If the money for Savannah River is not transferred by June 1, 2013, between seven hundred and nine hundred workers will be furloughed.
My greatest fear for the future of the U.S. nuclear program, public and private, is that there will be steeply increasing costs associated with reactor problems and nuclear waste and that more and more critical work will be delayed or cancelled in coming budget battles. Eventually, there may be areas associated with nuclear facilities that are just fenced off and forgotten until some horrible accident forces us to pay attention to them.
