DOE LOOKING AT WAYS TO ‘SOFTEN THE BLOW’ TO WORKFORCE OF MOX STANDBY

By ExchangeMonitor

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said yesterday the Department of Energy was examining ways to “soften the blow” to the skilled workforce currently building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility as DOE moves to put the facility into cold standby. The Department’s decision to put the facility in cold standby has drawn significant opposition from South Carolina and Georgia lawmakers and a lawsuit from South Carolina aimed at preventing the Department from stopping construction on the facility in Fiscal Year 2014. Moniz faced questions from House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) yesterday about the decision to halt construction while other alternatives—including MOX—are examined in more detail. “Is it wise to put it in cold standby and incur those costs while you are deciding what you want to do, or should we go ahead with it while you decide what you want to do?” Simpson asked.

Moniz suggested there was a difference of $300 million in putting the facility in cold standby versus continuing construction. “We will be looking at how we can soften the blow in terms of some of the skills because putting it in standby is not itself a simple action,” Moniz said. “It’s a judgment on optionality. In terms of if in a year or year and half one decides that MOX isn’t the way to go then there would be the issue of having spent another hundreds of millions of dollars on the project. But there are downsides doing it the other way.”

Moniz also confirmed that DOE is examining four alternatives for disposing of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium as part of an agreement with Russia, which are believed to include MOX, deep boreholes, downblending the material and disposing of it at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, and blending it with high level waste and vitrifying it. “There are both reactor alternatives and non-reactor alternatives, and there is another issue that the reactor alternatives satisfy the agreement that we have with Russia at this time,” Moniz said. “The other would require a real dialogue, and a dialogue isn’t that simple.”

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