The Department of Energy wants a federal judge to let the agency resume closing an over-budget plutonium disposal plant in South Carolina, court papers filed on June 15 show.
On June 7, in a lawsuit brought by South Carolina, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs ordered DOE to halt its planned closure of the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). Last week, the department appealed that decision in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, then asked Childs to lift her injunction on shuttering the MFFF for as long as it takes the agency to argue its case before the appellate court.
The agency wanted Childs to stay the injunction by Thursday, but the judge had not ruled on the motion at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
South Carolina wants the MFFF to maintain its disposal mission, while DOE wants to turn the plant into a production factory for warhead cores called plutonium pits. South Carolina sued over that plan May 25 and quickly secured a preliminary injunction from Childs that forced DOE to resume construction of the facility for at least the duration of the state’s lawsuit.
The MFFF was designed to fulfill the terms of an arms-control pact that requires Russia and the United States to each dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium. The MFFF, which would turn the weaponizable material into fuel for commercial reactors, was supposed to be built by 2016 and cost around $5 billion. Now, MFFF prime contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services estimates it will cost another $5 billion over about 10 more years to complete the facility for the disposal mission.
If DOE shuts down the MFFF, the surplus plutonium would be diluted elsewhere at the Savannah River Site, then buried at the agency’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. The Energy Department was forbidden from doing any work on this MFFF alternative, called “dilute and dispose,” by Childs’ injunction.
