Ten members of the House of Representatives from South Carolina and Georgia are urging Energy Secretary Rick Perry to sustain construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site.
The Obama administration tried to cancel the decade-old project, through which Washington would meet its commitment to a nonproliferation agreement that requires the United States and Russia each to eliminate 34 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. The MOX process would convert the material into commercial reactor fuel, but the Obama DOE said it had identified a method that was far cheaper and faster. Congress, though, resisted all efforts to defund construction.
The Trump administration has not officially stated its position on MOX, but it could do so in the full budget proposal for fiscal 2018 expected next month. In the meantime, construction of the MOX facility continues as directed by Congress while DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration continues to study the dilute and dispose alternative, agency spokeswoman Amy Boyette said by email Friday: “Details of the budget are still being finalized. When the President’s Budget Request is transmitted to the Congress in a few weeks’ time, we will be able to provide more details.”
In a letter to Perry, the lawmakers cited the estimate from contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services that the plant is 70 percent complete – a figure disputed by the NNSA, which oversees the project.
“Despite congressional direction to continue construction of the MOX Project, progress has been slowed by an unsteady DOE – and the mission to dispose of excess weapons plutonium has suffered,” according to the April 6 letter. “With your support, MOX can deliver on our government’s obligations both internationally and at home. We are encouraged with your leadership, the Department of Energy will follow through on its commitments.”
The Department of Energy and its MOX contractor have in recent years grown increasingly at odds over the project – with DOE estimating the facility would cost $17 billion just to build and not be ready until 2048 and CB&I AREVA MOX Services putting the numbers at $10 billion and 2029. The federal agency says its proposed alternative – diluting the plutonium using other facilities at the Savannah River Site and disposing of the resulting material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant – would save billions of dollars and cut decades off the schedule for completion.
More recently, the NNSA awarded the contractor just $267,000 of the possible $3 million award fee for the last fiscal year – an action CB&I AREVA said is indicative of the agency’s efforts to kill the project.
This battle has already had apparent effects, the lawmakers said in their letter: Russian President Vladimir Putin last year cited the dispute over MOX as contributing to his decision to suspend his government’s participation in the plutonium disposal agreement. The state of South Carolina also sued DOE for failing to meet the terms of an agreement to by January 2016 process or remove 1 metric ton of plutonium stored at the Savannah River Site.
“Despite congressional direction to continue construction of the MOX Project, progress has been slowed by an unsteady DOE – and the mission to dispose of excess weapons plutonium has suffered,” according to the letter. “With your support, MOX can deliver on our government’s obligations, both internationally and at home.”
The Savannah River Site is located in western South Carolina, along the border with Georgia.
Signatories to the letter were: Reps. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Rick Allen (R-Ga.), James Clyburn (D-S.C.), Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Austin Scott (R-Ga.), Tom Rice (R-S.C.), and Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.).
The lawmakers invited Perry to visit the Savannah River Site. Perry, who has received several such invitations to view DOE facilities around the nation, has not yet responded, a Wilson spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The letter also highlighted national security and other research being conducted at the Savannah River National Laboratory and ongoing management of waste left by the site’s Cold War nuclear arms operations.
Eight tanks filled with radioactive waste have been closed to date by mixing the material with a cement grout, the lawmakers said, “but much work remains to be done.”
“This will require the continued maintenance and operation of the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) and a seamless integration of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF),” the letter says. “It will also require construction of saltstone disposal units to ensure that SWPF is able to operate at its full capacity through its lifetime.”
Roughly 35 million gallons of radioactive waste are stored in more than 40 tanks at Savannah River; 90 percent of the material is salt waste. The SWPF, due to begin operations late next year, would increase the pace of salt waste processing, with the resulting material then stored in the saltstone disposal units.
Some waste from Savannah River would ultimately be shipped for permanent burial at the permanent geologic repository that Congress in 1982 ordered DOE to build. The Trump administration has indicated it will revive the Yucca Mountain storage project, which was suspended by its predecessor.
Perry visited Yucca Mountain in late March, in his first such site trip as energy secretary, shortly after the White House proposed to spend $120 million in the next budget year on interim storage of nuclear waste and licensing of the Nevada facility.
“The successful remediation of high level waste at SRS will also require the Department of Energy to make progress towards a permanent repository,” the House members wrote. “We encourage you to continue to weigh the technical merits as well as the work that has already been done at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada as you consider the most expeditious option for removing waste form the area.”
