Lifecycle costs for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility could reach into the “high $30 billions” even if funding constraints on the project were lifted, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee yesterday. Scrutiny has increased on the project since the National Nuclear Security Administration released a study by The Aerospace Corporation suggesting that the lifecycle costs of the project could reach $52 billion—including more than $4 billion already spent—under a funding profile constrained to $500 million a year. Moniz said the Department of Energy had “informally” looked at the implications of relaxing the funding cap. “This has been our problem since the beginning—that cap then spreads the project out so long that it builds up,” Moniz said during an exchange with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.). A funding profile of more than $500 million “does lower the life-cycle cost significantly, but it is still in the high $30 billions,” he said.
Moniz hasn’t backed away from The Aerospace Corporation findings, noting that the Department wanted to be transparent and data driven and that “sometimes the results aren’t so pretty.” He said study done by The Aerospace Corporation incorporated a lot of risk management contingency into its estimate on top of the constraints put in place by the $500 million funding cap. The lifecycle costs of the project include not just building the facility but also other components of the U.S. plutonium disposition program, including pit disassembly and conversion and the cost to operate the facility as it turns 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel.
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