Brian Bradley
WC Monitor
8/7/2015
The Energy Department has extended its deadline for the red team reviewing options for disposal of tons of U.S. plutonium to report its findings to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz from Aug. 10 to Aug. 17, an NNSA official told WC Monitor yesterday. “[I]t was done to ensure that the red team had adequate time to complete their analysis given the large amount of information under examination,” the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, stated in an email.
Congressional staffers said they were not surprised about the extension, citing a short initial timeline of six weeks for the team to report its findings to DOE. Moniz in June instructed Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason to chair the review, which is examining disposal options for 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium and is expected to recommend a best path forward. Lawmakers expect a one-month-plus continuing resolution to start fiscal 2016, which would extend current funding levels for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. $345 million was appropriated for the program in fiscal 2015. “We expect a CR for the first month and a half of the fiscal year, so even if the red team doesn’t finish until the end of September, that still works with our schedule,” one congressional staffer told WC Monitor. DOE is considering two options for disposing of the plutonium—downblending the material, or reprocessing it through the MOX facility, whose construction is about 70 percent complete, according to contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services. The MOX facility is currently the designated pathway in an agreement with Russia for disposal of 34 metric tons of weapons grade plutonium in each country.
Members of the red team last month visited the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, which is one prospective repository to house the excess plutonium after downblending or MOX reprocessing. One week later, about three-quarters of that 20-member group visited the MOX plant for two weeks, one week longer than expected, WC Monitor has learned. MOX contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services estimates plant construction is about 70 percent complete. A source familiar with the red team review said the group has been “thorough” and is not “tipping its hand one way or the other” about whether the report would recommend plutonium downblending or MOX as a best disposition option.
Members of the South Carolina congressional delegation have expressed concern about previous plutonium disposition reviews DOE has arranged, most recently one completed in April by The Aerospace Corp., a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Air Force. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) joined with Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) to write a March 25 letter to Moniz stating: “We fail to understand why DOE did not choose a FFRDC that has broader expertise in nuclear materials disposition and nuclear construction. This decision seems comparable to selecting a nuclear engineering company to review a satellite program at the Department of Defense.”
And at least one anti-MOX activist is voicing displeasure with DOE’s selection of the red team membership. In an email to WC Monitor, Tom Clements, director of advocacy group Savannah River Site Watch, said there were too few academic and independent experts on the team. The team includes 19 members in addition to Mason, according to the list of participants obtained last month by WC Monitor. Overall, the team comprises eight Navarro Research and Engineering experts, three Savannah River National Laboratory officials, two Oak Ridge National Lab executives, two Los Alamos National Lab employees, one Tennessee Valley Authority employee, one Lawrence Livermore expert, one Idaho National Lab executive, one U.K. National Nuclear Laboratory executive, and one Stanford professor.
“While it may produce an unbiased product, I question the make-up of the team as it does not include enough non-DOE participants and includes a number of staffer members from a contractor that has worked on the MOX project at SRS,” Clements said. In addition to MOX and downblending, plutonium immobilization has been consistently mentioned as another disposition option.
MOX opponents in the science community have encouraged the red team to consider their viewpoint: Frank von Hippel, Professor and Co-Director of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and Edwin Lyman, senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, sent reports outlining plutonium disposal alternatives to the red team. Lyman’s December 2014 report, “Excess Plutonium Disposition: The Failure of MOX and the Promise of Its Alternatives,” highlights schedule delays of MOX plant construction, technical difficulty, and cost, among other things. Von Hippel’s report, completed with the help of University of Sussex (U.K.) professor of science and technology policy Gordon MacKerron, and entitled “Alternatives to MOX Direct-disposal options for stockpiles of separated plutonium,” largely echoes Lyman’s findings.
“The schedules of the MOX fuel programs slipped … and their projected costs grew,” von Hippel and MacKerron stated. “The United States decided that it could not continue to increase its funding commitment to Russia’s program and, in 2010, accepted Russia’s preference to use its excess weapons plutonium to fuel Russia’s demonstration plutonium-breeder reactors. Unfortunately, Russia plans to separate and recycle this plutonium after it has been irradiated. The danger of plutonium theft in Russia therefore will not be reduced.”
Any red team determination of a “best pathway” for spent fuel could also involve judgments about final storage areas for the plutonium. Experts have pointed to WIPP as a possibility, but moving the material—either downblended plutonium or spent MOX fuel—to that location would require progressing through significant legal and procedural hurdles. Two sources familiar with the red team review confirmed that a separate independent review has found that downblended plutonium could not be disposed at WIPP without a new design modification for the storage site, documented safety assessment, and a supplemental National Environmental Policy Act process. “They would have to completely revise their safety basis,” one government official told WC Monitor, referring to the potential for storing excess plutonium at WIPP. “It would be quite the undertaking.” The independent review is informing the red team, according to one of the sources.
DOE on July 31 announced it is pushing back WIPP’s target restart date from March 2016 as it continues to recover from a fire and separate radiation release in February 2014. The independent report found that DOE can dispose of 35.8 metric tons of plutonium at WIPP using the latest packaging method for fissile transuranic waste, using the criticality control overpack within a 208-liter container. Along with the 34 metric tons designated for disposal through the agreement with Russia, DOE plans to dispose of 13.1 additional metric tons of excess plutonium, and has processed about 5 metric tons of plutonium for disposal. The independent report is said to have derived these numbers from the 2014 Annual TRU Waste Inventory Report, which does not clearly account for the 5 metric tons. Considering this uncertainty, DOE must dispose of 47-52 metric tons of plutonium, according to sources who referenced the independent report. While WIPP is not designated to accept MOX spent fuel, MOX plant completion and conversion of the existing 34 metric tons of plutonium into MOX fuel would allow the plutonium not covered by the U.S.-Russia agreement to be disposed of at WIPP without requiring adjustments of the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act, according to the sources.
But securing the proper designation and permitting for MOX spent fuel could also be a rigorous process, Lyman said in an interview yesterday with WC Monitor. “[T]here is no repository for spent MOX fuel, or even for immobilized plutonium and high-level waste, because Yucca Mountain’s canceled,” he said. “The House Republicans are trying to get it back on the table again. I’m not sure if they’ll succeed, but up until the country has cited a repository that is capable of accepting highly radioactive waste, either spent fuel or reprocessing waste, there’s no final destination for spent MOX fuel like there isn’t for any other type of spent fuel.” The Obama administration canceled funding for Yucca in 2011.
If the red team throws “100 percent” of its support behind WIPP as a plutonium repository, one knowledgeable source told WC Monitor that a congressional push for permitting WIPP to receive up to the full amount of existing U.S. excess plutonium could start soon after the team reports its results. Presumably, this would allow WIPP to receive the full amount of U.S. excess plutonium if the red team selects downblending as its preferred disposition option. However, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act might need to be amended to support the necessary permitting, and the law could be the last line of defense against the permanent shutdown of Yucca Mountain in Nevada. According to the knowledgeable source, congressional Republicans do not want to open up debate on the bill, as this could incite opposing lawmakers to weaken or erase Yucca’s designation as a repository for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste. GOP lawmakers hope the red team will outline how to seek permitting without amending the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) convened a meeting yesterday on Capitol Hill, and invited all House representatives, senators, and Hill staffers to discuss plutonium disposition. The Senate starts its annual August recess today. The House started its August recess this week.
