
The Department of Energy plans a somewhat expedited environmental review of its plan to convert a partially built plutonium recycling plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., into a plutonium-pit factory, according to a decision posted online this week. The agency has studied since June whether it must complete a brand new environmental impact statement about its plan to annually produce 80 pits — fissile nuclear-weapon cores — by 2030. The plan, unveiled in 2018, includes converting the unfinished…