Stakeholders Optimistic About Savannah River Jobs, Economy Despite MOX Termination

As employees at the Savannah River Site’s MOX project continue to receive termination notices, local stakeholders in the Aiken, S.C., area are optimistic that more jobs are on the way and that the local economy will remain stable.

That is because other contractors have been making necessary hires for various missions at the 310-square-mile Department of Energy facility, and might also receive another high-profile mission in the near future that will require more workers.

The Savannah River Site is the largest employer in the region, with 10,000 employees doing work for both DOE’s Environmental Management (EM) program and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

By Feb. 4, more than 1,000 of the roughly 1,600 workers at the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) will no longer be employed, according to notices emailed to workers over the past couple months. The plant was being built to process 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors, under a 2000 arms control agreement between the United States and Russia.

The NNSA on Oct. 10 terminated MOX Services’ prime contract to build the facility, following a political and legal fight that has spanned more than five years and two administrations. Since 2015, the Energy Department has said the life-cycle cost of the project will be three times higher than the original $17 billion projection from 2007, including $5 billion spent to date. Meanwhile, the agency says downblending, a method that would use other SRS facilities to dilute the plutonium for underground disposal in New Mexico, would only cost $17 billion.

MOX Services did not respond to questions about the schedule for future layoffs and shutting down the MFFF.

As termination notices increase, stakeholder groups in the Aiken area are focused on economic impact. One of those groups, the SRS Community Reuse Organization (SRSCRO), works with DOE and other groups who partner with Savannah River to benefit the site and local economy, through public information forums, events that educate students and potential employees of the site, and various other ways.

Community Reuse Organization President Rick McLeod said regional economics show each job at Savannah River represents 2.5 jobs in the region, meaning MOX termination could impact 3,750 jobs in the area, not counting the 1,600 MOX workers. These figures are based on an August 2017 impact study by TIP Strategies, a Texas-based group that works with local communities to better their economic landscape. The group reached its conclusion on the ratio based on SRS worker spending that supports other jobs in the region.

TIP Strategies also concluded that SRS employees spend roughly $1.2 billion annually in the regional economy. With so much money in play, the large number of lost jobs is concerning, McLeod said. However, he is cautiously optimistic about the plutonium pit project that could be coming to SRS.

Under the NNSA project, the unfinished MFFF would be repurposed to make fissile cores for nuclear warheads. The agency’s goal is to each year produce 50 of these cores at SRS by 2030. While that is a good sign for the future of SRS, McLeod said there are many questions, such as how many jobs the mission would create and when they would be realized. “It appears job losses from MOX could be offset, however, the timing of the pit jobs is uncertain and may not overlap in the near term,” he said.

Will Williams, president of the Aiken Economic Development Partnership, added that other contractors are ramping up their hiring, which should also help offset the loss of MOX jobs. For example, SRS management and operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) recently reported that it has about 900 job openings suitable for MFFF employees. These jobs will include fields such as construction, engineering, and information technology.

Also, the contractor plans to hire 100 more workers this fiscal year for the site’s tritium mission, which covers production of tritium the Department of Defense’s nuclear weapons. An SRS spokesperson said last month these jobs are needed due to an expected increase in workload for the mission.

A number of job fairs have already been held for impacted MOX employees, with DOE and its contractors looking to relocate them at Savannah River based on matching skill sets. “I’m optimistic that many workers who have received (Work Adjustment and Retraining Notifications) will quickly be reemployed elsewhere in our region, perhaps even at SRS,” Williams said.