Kenneth Fletcher
NS&D Monitor
6/19/2015
A sufficient level of funding for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility project would top $1 billion per year, Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told South Carolina media this week. The Administration has emphasized increased costs in the MOX project since it first attempted to suspend the program in 2014. After receiving opposition from lawmakers to the project shutdown, officials have put the burden on Congress to provide the funding. “When it comes to the total funding – not just for the fabrication plant, but for all of the other activities … you’re talking north of $1 billion a year,” Moniz told the Aiken Standard. “So we’ve got to see if Congress is willing to appropriate over a billion dollars a year for decades to get it done. That’s the truth.”
The MOX facility under construction at the Savannah River Site aims to convert 34 metric tons of surplus weapons plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors as part of a 2000 agreement with Russia. At the current funding level of $345 million the project “will just never finish,” Moniz told the Aiken Standard. A recent report by the Aerospace Corporation commissioned by the Administration found that the total lifecycle cost for the MOX option stands at $47.5 billion if the project is funded at $500 million per year. If the project is funded at $375 million per year, close to current levels, the total cost jumps to about $110 billion and the completion date stretches 100 years into the future to 2115. But the report’s findings have been challenged by MOX supporters in Congress who say the costs should be far lower.
