Several nongovernmental organizations on Wednesday enouraged Congress to discontinue funding for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility being built at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
The Project on Government Oversight, Savannah River Site Watch, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and National Taxpayers Union signed the letter sent to lawmakers, highlighting a newly released National Nuclear Security Administration performance evaluation report and award fee scorecard for project contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services.
The evaluation, released Feb. 21 via Freedom of Information Act request to Savannah River Site Watch, revealed an overall “satisfactory” rating for the contractor and an award fee of 8.9 percent of the total possible amount, or $267,000. This was due in large part to the contractor’s “unsatisfactory” cost, schedule, and technical performance; one of three evaluation criteria, integrated project execution, earned zero percent of the award fee from the NNSA.
The MOX facility is being built to eliminate 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium under a nonproliferation agreement with Russia. The Barack Obama administration proposed terminating the project in favor of an alternative plutonium dilution and disposal method; President Donald Trump’s administration is now responsible for determining the future of MOX.
“The evaluation is scathing, and should be the final nail in the coffin for a project that has become nothing more than a sinkhole for taxpayer dollars,” the groups said in their letter. The said the cost to complete construction for the facility “has gone from $1.6 billion to a staggering $17 billion—over 10 times the original estimate. That cost doesn’t include operating the plant over the next 20 years.”
“As it is now abundantly clear that there is no path forward to save the MOX project, we urge you to discontinue funding for it,” the letter said.
