GRAHAM CONTINUES TO PRESSURE NNSA ON MOX DECISION

Since the NNSA announced its decision to put the project into cold standby due to massive construction and lifecycle cost increases, Graham has maintained that there is no better alternative to the MOX project, and he bristled at a suggestion that disposing of the plutonium in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico would be a better option. “This idea of diluting plutonium and saving $16 billion is just an idea that I think will never bear fruit,” Graham said during an exchange with new NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz. “Do you have any agreement where to put the diluted plutonium? … Can you put it at the WIPP? Have they agreed to accept it?” Klotz said no discussions have taken place on that option, which was part of a study on alternatives released earlier this week by the NNSA. “This is a first cut at that,” Klotz said, noting that a more detailed study would be conducted over the next 12 to 18 months.

 

Graham, however, was unconvinced. “Why should this committee stand by and accept this from an organization who picked a disposal path, put it in an international agreement, has been sitting on the sidelines watching this program for five years, then all of a sudden at the 50 to 60 [percent complete point] says let’s start over?” Graham said. “That cannot be the way we deal with the state of South Carolina. It cannot be the way that this committee allows the Department of Energy and the NNSA to operate.”

 

Others on the subcommittee expressed skepticism about the NNSA’s approach, including Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) as well as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the subcommittee. “I’m really not sure that the right decision has been made,” she said, later adding: “Whatever you call this ‘cold hold’ thing, I don’t know what it really accomplishes.” Feinstein pressed Klotz to assemble a group to look at MOX options similar to the Red Team that examined alternatives to the Uranium Processing Facility, and Klotz committed to examine new ways to look at the project and said he would report back to the subcommittee on the path forward in two weeks.