The Senate Appropriations Committee wants the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico to start planning for accommodating 34 metric tons of processed plutonium that was supposed to be converted into nuclear reactor fuel at the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) in South Carolina.
Energy Secretary Perry officially canceled the MOX project on May 10 in favor of converting the unfinished facility into a nuclear-warhead core production plant and diluting the surplus plutonium for disposal at WIPP.
The Senate panel’s fiscal 2019 energy and water bill, passed last week, supports the aim of killing off the over-budget and behind-schedule Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). Specifically, the Senate Appropriations bill would provide $220 million to close out the project, while the House Appropriations measure includes $335 million to continue building it.
Canceling MOX faces opposition from South Carolina’s congressional delegation and state government – which last week sued to prevent the DOE from halting the project.
In the detailed report for its energy and water bill, the Senate committee instructed DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office to file a report to the House and Senate Appropriations panels by February 2019. The report should outline the permits, legislative measures, and physical changes at the disposal site necessary to carry out the new DOE plan.
The report would also address potential funding needs for the expansion, along with any necessary scientific and technical reviews.
Currently, WIPP is limited to disposing of 175,565 cubic meters of transuranic waste, under the 1992 WIPP Land Withdrawal Act. Congressional action would be needed to amend the act to allow for the extra space to accommodate the plutonium, New Mexico Environment Secretary Butch Tongate said recently.
Under the current method of counting the waste underground at WIPP, DOE has already empaneled about 90,000 cubic meters. The New Mexico Environment Department is about to rule on a request from the federal agency that would shrink the volume counted to 60,000 cubic meters, by not counting the empty space between drums in a canister.
Even if the new counting method is approved, the amount of TRU waste already destined for WIPP from Energy Department generator sites would fill it to capacity.
