The US state of South Carolina and the federal government have reached a $600m settlement to end six years of litigation related to the remaining 9.5 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium relocated to the Savannah River Site in the early 2000s.
Under the terms of the of the settlement, the US will pay South Carolina $600m immediately, and the Department of Energy remains obligated to remove the plutonium by 2037.
South Carolina will allow the DOE 16.5 years to remove the remaining plutonium from Savannah River or monetary penalties will be re-instated and the DOE will be subject to additional litigation.
The settlement, the single largest in South Carolina’s history, ends a highly contentious battle that involved multiple federal and state administrations and “threatened to paralyse the country’s industrial complex and pit the state against the federal government for decades”, said South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson.
…