Three Republican presidential candidates advocated for construction funding for the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) during campaign stops this week in Aiken, S.C. – a town less than 20 miles from the site. President Barack Obama’s 2017 budget request calls for shuttering the MFFF and the entire MOX project, the nation’s current pathway to meet an agreement with Russia that calls for each nation to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium.
Two of the three candidates, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio (Fla.), have been endorsed by South Carolina Republicans who are also MOX advocates. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham endorsed Bush in January and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott endorsed Rubio earlier this month. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson also spoke fondly of the MFFF, which congressional advocates say is 70 percent complete based on how much construction is left to complete. Naysayers, including Department of Energy personnel, have said the facility is closer to 40 percent complete because of the cost it will take finish construction.
During a Tuesday evening campaign stop at a GOP forum in Aiken, Bush said the cost overruns at the project, which DOE officials have projected to be three times the original $17 billion cost estimate, are due to lack of oversight by Obama and Congress. Despite the growing costs, Bush said MOX should continue. “[Stopping MOX] would be a violation of the agreement with Russia. Of course we should continue unless there’s an alternative that is seriously and thoroughly better.”
The Department of Energy believes it has found a worthy alternative in the downblending method. While the MOX method would convert the plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel, the downblending approach would use inhibitor materials to dilute the stockpiles at SRS and ship the final solution to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The plant, which primarily receives transuranic waste, was shut down in February 2014 after two unrelated safety incidents. Graham, Scott, and fellow South Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson have said multiple times WIPP does not meet the qualifications to store 34 tons of diluted plutonium; several evaluations conducted by DOE state that adjustments would have to be made at the WIPP to store the plutonium.
Carson also attended the Tuesday night forum and also blamed Obama for the rising costs of the MOX project. Cost estimates include a June projection from Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz that it would cost $1 billion a year to adequately fund MOX, compared to about $400 million annually for downblending. “I think that somebody is not paying attention because there’s no way that your cost should balloon by that much, so somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing,” Carson said. “Already billions of dollars have been invested in taxpayers’ money and there certainly needs to be a way of dealing with the plutonium, and at the same time if you can create fuel rods for reactors that’s a win-win situation, so the concept is a good concept.” During a forum on Wednesday, Rubio also endorsed completion of the MOX program, stating that if elected, he would fully fund the project.
The candidates’ support of the MOX project was criticized by anti-MOX watchdogs, including SRS Watch Director Tom Clements. “I think they were pandering to people who may vote because of the MOX status. But they didn’t present a path forward for the project so their support is really rhetorical and not based on any in-depth analysis,” Clements said.
Obama’s budget would appropriate $285 million toward the plutonium disposition program. The proposal calls for $270 million to begin shutting down the MFFF and another $15 million to begin analyzing plans to switch to the downblending method. In the outer years, the proposal puts the MFFF on schedule to completely shut down by 2021. The proposal seeks $221 million each year over a four-year span, or $884 million, to shutter the facility.
