Brian Bradley
WC Monitor
10/9/2015
Top Officials Say Dilution and Disposal Cheaper, More Practical
Future costs and risks to build the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility are significantly greater than those associated with a dilute-and-dispose approach for 34 metric tons of excess U.S. weapon-grade plutonium, according to the executive summary of the second phase of a report by The Aerospace Corp. on MOX and other plutonium disposal methods. WC Monitor obtained the summary of the report’s second phase, which was distributed to Congress this week.
Three top Energy Department officials indicated to Congress on Wednesday that dilution and disposal is their preferred pathway to dispose of the plutonium in accordance with the 2000 U.S.-Russian Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement. Their conclusion was informed in part by the estimate that dilution and disposal could be carried out for approximately $400 million per year in unescalated dollars, about $55 million more than the current funding level for the unfinished MOX plant at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which would require about $700 million-$800 million per year in unescalated dollars to complete, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason said during a House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing Wednesday. However, in actuality, costs would escalate in line with factors such as inflation, Mason noted. “In both cases, you would have to sustain that funding over the multidecade operating life of the facility against inflation,” he said. Mason testified at the hearing alongside National Nuclear Security Administrator Frank Klotz and Associate Deputy Energy Secretary John MacWilliams.
MOX cannot be completed under its current funding level at expected inflation rates in the out-years, and plutonium dilution and disposal is simpler than the other disposal method from a design and physical standpoint, according to the Aerospace report summary. The latest report on plutonium disposition options by Aerospace, a research and development and advisory firm specializing in national security space programs, came after Congress directed NNSA to commission a report examining plutonium disposition options. “Dilution and disposal in a Geologic Repository is the least complex in design and operations,” the summary states. “This option also has the lowest cost risk in comparison with the other options for” disposal, such as irradiation of MOX fuel in light-water reactors. After several legal, design, and safety issues were sorted through, any diluted plutonium would presumably be permanently stored at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, which is the only designated transuranic waste storage facility in the U.S.
MOX supporters, such as former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and members of the South Carolina congressional delegation, have argued that the program should proceed, in part, because the PMDA would be too difficult to amend to allow for a non-MOX disposal process, and the facility is already approximately 70 percent built. “Over and over again, there actually has been, I believe, tremendous success and achievement,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) said during Wednesday’s MOX hearing. “The agreement of our state was to accept the highly radioactive weapons-grade plutonium and to process it and move it out, and it’s a concern for the people that I represent. That’s the greatest concern that we have.” Lawmakers have also challenged the selection of Aerospace to carry out the study, as well as the corporation’s cost estimates for MOX and dilution and disposal. Aerospace concluded that the total life-cycle cost for the MOX option stands at $47.5 billion if the project is funded at $500 million per year. If the project is funded at $375 million per year, the total cost jumps to about $110 billion and the disposal completion date stretches 100 years into the future to 2115. Total cost for downblending the plutonium for disposal would cost about $17.2 billion, the report states.
Other than MOX and dilution and disposal, Aerospace explored at least three plutonium disposition alternatives. It dubbed the advanced disposition reactor option as the most technically challenging and highest cost-risk option; deemed immobilization as “similar in complexity to MOX Fuel” with high cost risk; and said borehole disposition would pose challenges for site location and characterization, drilling, emplacement, and verification of container soundness. Aerospace also highlighted one particular finding of the DOE-commissioned MOX Red Team, led by Mason, which submitted its report in August—that the best-case scenario for the MOX approach would be more expensive and incur more risk than the worst-case scenario for dilution and disposal. “The Red Team assumes that the latter approach is sufficient for compliance with the United States-Russian Federation Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement … and that is efficiently enabled in cooperation with the State of New Mexico,” the Aerospace summary states.
Relations with Russia
This assumption still would have to stand up to a renegotiation of the PMDA, which specifies MOX as the disposal method for 34 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium in each country. After Wednesday’s hearing, NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz said in a brief interview that the parties are not yet negotiating an amendment to the PMDA, but added that the U.S. has informed Russia of DOE’s increased support for the dilution and disposal approach. “We have raised to their awareness at the technical level … that we are exploring alternative pathways to get to the mission of disposing of 34 metric tons of excess weapons-grade plutonium,” Klotz said. “Their response has been, ‘Well, if you have something more definitive, then let’s get back together and discuss it.’”
But Congress could be stubborn about appropriating the $400 million the U.S. in the agreement pledged to pay Russia to help it run its MOX program, which completed construction of its plant in August. Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said during the hearing that it appears a “virtual impossibility” for Congress to approve any dispersal of funding to Russia for such purposes, given the current tense geopolitical situation between Washington and Moscow.
Klotz during the hearing said the U.S. has paid none of the $400 million to Russia, per congressional instruction. “No funds will be paid to Russia in current or prior-year funding towards this commitment, and in accordance with recent congressional direction, all Russia program funds that were appropriated to the U.S. PMDA obligations were rescinded, and there are currently no funds available within the NNSA to support Russian plutonium disposition,” he said. Despite a Tuesday press release from Russian state atomic energy agency Rosatom, which quoted CEO Sergey Kirienko as saying Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz had told Russian officials DOE was suspending construction on its MOX facility, the department is not doing so at this time, according to Klotz. “It’s not my job to confirm or deny anything that the head of Rosatom in Russia says,” Klotz said. “I can tell you that the secretary of energy has not ordered a halt to construction of MOX. Indeed, we are carrying out the instructions and guidance which have been given by the Congress in two successive budget cycles to continue construction there, currently at the $345 million level.”
Passed last week by the House and on Wednesday by a 70-27 Senate vote, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2016 would require Moniz to re-baseline project construction and support activities for fiscal 2017, and to carry out MOX construction in fiscal 2016 at the Obama administration-requested funding level of $345 million. The legislation now awaits signature by President Barack Obama, who is expected to veto it because of language that pluses up his fiscal 2016 request for the Budget Control Act-exempted Overseas Contingency Operations account, an increase intended to circumvent BCA-induced budget austerity.
Klotz declined to comment on the widespread suspicion that the administration would request $0 in fiscal 2017 funding of the MOX project. It also remains unclear whether DOE will request that Congress cancel or divert MOX funding in the fiscal 2016 appropriations bill, which has not been passed, and which will presumably follow the current continuing resolution that expires on Dec. 11. But nixing MOX would not necessarily mean rerouting investment from the Savannah River Site or South Carolina, according to officials. “The department very strongly believes that Savannah River is not a closure site,” MacWilliams said during the hearing. “We want to see it have a long and prosperous future, and we are very open to the work of Congress, and to look for new missions, to expand existing infrastructure, to look at things like creating an overall strategic plan for the site, and finding investment to expand the mission of the lab, which has done truly extraordinary work over the last couple of years.”
Subcommittee Ranking Member Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said dilution and disposal is a better technology than MOX, and that DOE could maintain the current MOX job levels for such a project. “The MOX money is almost insignificant. But do they have a right to force that MOX money to go up, to double or triple it? I just don’t think so. We’re doing enough already,” Cooper said. “Why can’t we just maintain current funding levels, maintain current employment levels, maintain current job levels, but get the technology right as we dispose of this plutonium? That should do no injury to our friends in South Carolina. That should preserve our nonproliferation goals. That should help us prevent this terrible squeeze on the DoD/DOE nuclear budget, because we don’t know where the funding is going to come from.”
