Members of the House of Representatives have thrown early support in the latest budget process behind sustaining funding for the MOX project at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, but their colleagues in the Senate are so far silent on whether they will also again back the program.
The House version of the fiscal 2018 DOE funding bill, approved late last month by the lower chamber’s Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, would provide $340 million to continue building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) in South Carolina. The full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up the energy and water bill on Wednesday.
The United States agreed in a 2000 deal with Russia to use the MOX method to convert 34 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium into commercial reactor fuel.
The Obama administration sought unsuccessfully to cut off funding for the project. The Trump administration DOE has remained similarly intent on shuttering MOX, requesting $270 million in closure funding for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The Department of Energy would receive another $9 million to pursue its preferred alternative: diluting the plutonium at SRS and shipping the processed material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, N.M.
Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has not set a schedule for marking up the energy portion of the upper chamber’s version of the spending bill, according to spokeswoman Liz Wolgemuth. Representatives for Alexander and subcommittee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) did not disclose their latest thinking on MOX, but referred to prior statements that at least questioned the project.
Feinstein, for example, last year noted the escalating cost of the facility: “This is a problem, where projects start in the hundreds of millions of dollars and end up in billions. MOX is at an all-time high in terms of the billions it would cost.”
