A Nuclear Confrontation Shapes Up

Imagine 12,000 pounds of bomb-grade plutonium, some of the most dangerous stuff on Earth, barreling down Interstate 20 in heavily fortified trucks.

Dozens of state troopers stand in the way, their squad cars barricading the highway.

The governor of South Carolina lies in the road, in his signature seersucker suit, daring the feds to cross the state line.

It’s an absurd scenario. But it could come down to that.

At a time when FBI officials are warning of imminent terrorist threats, the Department of Energy is planning the largest shipment of plutonium ever, to a nuclear facility outside Aiken. And Gov. Jim Hodges has vowed to keep it out--even if it takes a roadblock. He has sued the Energy Department, ridiculed the federal government in TV commercials and mobilized state troopers. The shipments, destined for the Savannah River Site, a sprawling nuclear complex on the Georgia line, are supposed to begin later this month.

“I’ve certainly made some dramatic gestures,” Hodges said in an interview last week. “But disposing nuclear weapons, well, that’s a dramatic problem.”

Hanging in the balance is enough bomb-making material to produce at least 5,000 nuclear weapons, an arsenal larger than any country’s except for Russia and the United States.

Under arms control agreements with Russia, U.S. government officials have promised to decommission 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium. Energy officials have said the plutonium will be promptly converted into fuel for nuclear power plants, a safer and more stable form.

Hodges doesn’t trust them.

The Democratic governor, who believes the Bush administration is trying to torpedo him politically, said he will allow the plutonium into the state if the Department of Energy commits in a formal consent degree to recycling the bomb material--something that has never been done before--or removing it should that not happen.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has promised not to abandon the highly radioactive matter in South Carolina. He even put his pledge in a letter. But Abraham has refused to enter into a court-monitored consent decree, saying national security issues don’t belong in front of a judge.

Then there’s the Colorado connection.

Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican running for reelection this year, is pushing the Bush administration to get surplus plutonium out of his state--it’s stored at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site near Denver. The cleanup of the aging weapon plant is a key part of Allard’s campaign platform. Allard insists, along with energy officials, that much money will be saved by moving plutonium from Colorado to South Carolina.

But some folks in South Carolina don’t buy that. They say the Bush administration is sacrificing the interests of their state, a reliable Republican stronghold, to make friends and win votes in Colorado, historically more of a swing state.

“This isn’t about national security, the Russians or what’s good for our country,” said Dell Isham, executive director of the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club. “It’s about politics.”

Allard called that “ridiculous.”

“I wasn’t the one who dreamed up this issue right before the election. He did,” Allard said, referring to Hodges--who’s also up for reelection in the fall. “If all the states began to follow his example, our country would have serious problems.” (Earlier this spring, Allard’s press secretary was quoted in the Denver press as calling Hodges “Elmer Fudd.”) The issue goes back to 1997, when energy officials began looking for ways to dispose of surplus plutonium. With the Cold War over and the U.S. nuclear arsenal shrinking, there was no need for all the plutonium triggers, or “pits,” that lie at the heart of thermonuclear weapons. Many of these grapefruit-sized pits, which are small atomic bombs that trigger much bigger thermonuclear explosions, were manufactured at Rocky Flats. They’re so dangerous to handle that one whiff results in a 100% probability of cancer, scientists say. They’re also coveted by terrorists--and guarded very tightly.

Under pressure from arms control advocates, American and Russian officials agreed in September 2000 to dispose of 34 tons each of pits, plutonium shavings and other bomb-making nuclear material.

The U.S. side of the project is estimated to cost $3.8 billion over 20 years and create 1,300 jobs. Energy officials chose South Carolina’s Savannah River Site because of its technical expertise and secure facilities. For years, its five reactors produced volumes of plutonium and tritium, another bomb material; now the 310-square-mile facility specializes in processing radioactive waste.

Yet the bomb-to-fuel project is new science. France, England, Germany and India burn similar nuclear fuel, but nowhere is there a large-scale process to convert weapon-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power plants.

“This is a minefield, politically and scientifically,” said Steven Dolley, research director of the nonprofit Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. “It’s not clear how commercial reactors will handle this stuff.”

Energy officials say the process--called MOX, for “mixed oxide”--is safe. The plutonium is made less reactive by mixing it with oxygen.

“Moving forward with the MOX program is a critical part of our national security,” said Joe Davis, a Department of Energy spokesman. “We don’t want to let the Russians down. Or have surplus plutonium hanging around for someone to steal it.”

Originally, a portion of the surplus plutonium was going to be “immobilized” in molten radioactive glass set in stainless steel canisters. It’s a process that the Clinton administration favored. But earlier this year, the Energy Department decided to convert all surplus plutonium into fuel, ignoring environmental groups concerned about the expansion of nuclear energy.

That change is one of the grounds of Hodges’ lawsuit, filed May 1 in federal court in Aiken. Hodges says the government needs to submit a new environmental impact study before shipments can begin.

Already, he’s forced a shipment delay until June 15, the earliest date the trucks can leave Rocky Flats. The Colorado site will be the first to send plutonium to South Carolina and will be followed by other facilities scattered across the United States. The plan is to house the material in a closed-down reactor at the Savannah River Site while a MOX facility is built.

Lawyers for Hodges and the U.S. will meet in court June 13.

All this is delaying Allard’s dreams of closing Rocky Flats.

The veterinarian-turned-senator, who’s in a tight race for a second term, has spent years trying to turn Rocky Flats into a wildlife preserve. He’s already accelerated the process from an original projected deadline of 2072 to 2006, and the next step is removing the plutonium. He says the government will save $600 million a year by closing Rocky Flats and consolidating surplus plutonium at Savannah River. “You won’t need to pay guards in two places,” Allard said.

Meanwhile, Hodges is hatching plans for a major confrontation--or at least that’s what he wants people to think. Last month, he had the South Carolina Highway Patrol stage a drill along a highway near the Savannah River plant in which two dozen troopers practiced blocking a semi.

He’s also taken out TV ads, financed with $100,000 of campaign money, painting the federal government as reckless.

Hodges lays out a scenario in which the plutonium arrives, the MOX processing gets stalled or tabled, the promised jobs never come and South Carolina gets stuck with 34 tons of deadly gray powder.

Tactics aside, he may not have the law on his side.

In 1988, Cecil Andrus, then governor of Idaho, blocked a boxcar full of nuclear waste from entering his state. The action later was ruled unconstitutional and the boxcar rolled in. (The Energy Department eventually signed an agreement providing Idaho a timetable for waste processing and sanctions if deadlines weren’t met.)

Hodges has studied what happened in Idaho, he says.

“Until there is a legally enforceable agreement that holds the federal government to its word, I will do everything I can to keep that plutonium out of South Carolina,” Hodges said. “Once it’s here, we lose every bit of leverage.”

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Times researcher John Beckham contributed to this report.