The U.S. government secretly shipped a large amount of deadly plutonium from a South Carolina site that produced the radioactive metal for nuclear bombs during the Cold War to Nevada, the Trump administration revealed on Wednesday.
The Justice Department, on behalf of the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a notice filed with a U.S. court in Nevada that it could reveal the shipment of half a metric ton (1,100 pounds) because sufficient time had elapsed after the transfer to protect national security. The shipment occurred before November 2018.
The U.S. court in Nevada has been considering an effort by the state of Nevada to stop planned shipments of a metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina, that the Energy Department announced last August.