Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
8/28/15
As the Energy Department mulls how to dispose of 34 metric tons of excess U.S. plutonium, former New Mexico Governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Aug. 21 sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), urging him to push DOE to move forward with the embattled MOX program.
“As things stand, a host of dueling studies and claims have confused lawmakers and the public for years,” states the letter, which NS&D Monitor obtained yesterday. “This must stop, and I would respectfully ask that you urge the Department of Energy to cut through the clutter and re-baseline the MOX project in a collaborative effort that yields a final and credible-to-all cost and in-service date. No well-informed oversight by Congress is possible without a re-baselining.”
Per the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA), the U.S. and Russia must each dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium. The Aug. 13 Red Team report concluded the excess plutonium could be processed into MOX nuclear reactor fuel within a “reasonable timeframe” if the government provides $700 million to $800 million in annual funding for construction of the MOX plant in South Carolina and concurrent development of feed production and fuel qualification systems—through approximately 2025—and if the funding continued for longer-term operational feed and fuel production activities, “perhaps into the mid 2040s.” The report says downblending could be supported through $400 million in yearly funding—a roughly $55 million annual boost over current appropriated levels for MOX—over a time frame similar to the MOX option.
Richardson’s letter criticized DOE’s methods for commissioning plutonium disposition studies, and accused the department of running an “aggressive campaign against MOX.” He cited a short Red Team timeline and knocked an April Aerospace Corp. report that stated downblending would be more cost-effective than the MOX plant. He called the Aerospace report a “made-to-order” study, and noted DOE originally gave the Red Team “only” six weeks to conduct its report. “As well-intended as members of this latest group are, they were given only six weeks to do their job, and could only review the work of others for a report that was originally due on August 10,” Richardson wrote. In June, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz ordered a Red Team review to be submitted to DOE by Aug. 10. About a week before then, DOE extended the deadline to Aug. 17.
The report prepared by Aerospace, which is a federally funded research and development center specializing in national security space programs, estimated the MOX program would cost $47.5 billion over its life cycle, and that downblending would cost $17.2 billion. MOX contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services estimates the MOX plant as approximately 70 percent complete.
Richardson’s letter also grapples with the widely assumed notion that stocks of downblended plutonium would be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which the Red Team cited as potentially the most viable disposition site. WIPP remains indefinitely closed after a 2014 fire and subsequent radiation release, and several pieces of legislation would have to pass—including a law that expands WIPP’s allowable nuclear material inventory—in order for the New Mexico facility to accept the downblended plutonium. “[T]he current mission of WIPP can only be hindered by the years of legislative debate and environmental impact analyses that would go into a required enlarging of WIPP, and the changing of its allowed waste profile,” Richardson wrote. “In fact, as a former Secretary of Energy and Governor of New Mexico, I can assure you that WIPP, in our lifetimes, has the same chance of accepting weapons grade plutonium that Yucca Mountain has for accepting spent reactor fuel. It is self-deluding to claim otherwise.”
As the Red Team noted, PMDA dictates that MOX be the method by which the plutonium is processed, and both sides would need to update the agreement to permit any other approach, including downblending. Richardson also cited this as a reason to support MOX. “Regardless of vague pledges to ‘talk to the Russians’—which is all anyone says in Hill testimony everywhere—any non-MOX ‘alternative’ violates our landmark agreement.”
Furthermore, Richardson argued, proceeding with MOX would help its almost 2,000 unionized laborers who work in a right-to-work state and had to “intensively train” for their jobs because of “30 years of zero nuclear construction experience in the United States.” Reid’s office, DOE and The Aerospace Corp. did not immediately respond to NS&D Monitor requests for comment.
