February 09, 2016

Obama Aims to Terminate MOX Project

By ExchangeMonitor
The future of the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) is uncertain again as President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget proposal calls for shutting down the facility in lieu of another method of disposing of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. After more than a year of speculation, the proposal confirms that Obama and the Department of Energy want to ice the MOX method and move forward with a downblending approach. While MOX would convert 34 metric tons of plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel, downblending would dilute the plutonium using inhibitor materials and dispose of the material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, N.M.
 
Obama’s budget would appropriate $285 million to move forward with downblending but does not specify how much of the money would be used shut down MOX and how much would be used for downblending. That would be down from $340 million provided for construction of the MOX facility in this budget year, which ends on Sept. 30. In the outer years, the proposal puts the MFFF on schedule to completely shut down by 2021. The proposal seeks $221 million each year over a four-year span, or $884 million, to shut down the facility. 
 
The Department of Energy lauded the proposal, stating it allows the agency to complete targeted disposal of the plutonium significantly earlier and cheaper than with MOX. Other opponents of the program were similarly pleased.
 
"There are options that will cost far less, be completed more quickly, and not create the unnecessary security risks inherent in the MOX-based approach," said Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
 

While MOX opponents are celebrating, South Carolina’s lawmakers have already denounced the project’s potential shutdown. MOX advocates include U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) who supporters may look to first to sustain construction of the Savannah River Site facility. Graham serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, as well as the upper chamber’s Appropriations Committee, which means a final vote to nix MOX would have to pass through him on more than one occasion. On Tuesday, Graham said in a press release that Obama’s proposal is "reckless" because it seeks MOX termination "without a proven disposition plan in place." 

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NEW: Via public records request, I’ve been able to confirm reporting today that a warrant has been issued for DOE deputy asst. secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition Sam Brinton for another luggage theft, this time at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid airport. (cc: @EMPublications)

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