Plutonium processingS.C. fights to keep costly plutonium processing project alive
The United States and Russia have agreed to dispose of thirty-four tons of weapon-grade plutonium each, an amount equal to 17,000 nuclear warheads. The United States budgeted $4 billion for a mixed-oxide fuel project, known as MOX, at the Savannah River Site, S.C., to process the plutonium, but construction costs have now reached $8 billion, and officials estimate the facility will cost about $30 billion over its operating years. DOE has suspended the MOX project and is looking for alternative plutonium processing methods. South Carolina has sued the federal government, arguing that since Congress has authorized the funds for MOX, the administration must spend the money.
South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson has asked a federal judge last week to rule in the state’s favor in a lawsuit seeking to stop the U.S. Department of Energy’s plan to halt the construction of the mixed-oxide fuel project at the Savannah River Site. The multi-billion dollar project, known as MOX, was designed to convert weapon-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel.
Governor Nikki Haley noted that halting the project would delay the implementation of some parts of an arms reduction agreement with Russia, and also eliminate hundreds of jobs in the state.
The United States and Russia agreed to dispose of thirty-four tons of weapons-grade plutonium each, an amount equal to 17,000 nuclear warheads. About $4 billion was budgeted more than a decade ago to build the MOX project, but construction costs have reached roughly $8 billion and federal officials predict the facility will cost about $30 billion over its operating years.
The Augusta Chronicle reports that the Obama administration wants to suspend the MOX project becaue of the delays and cost overruns, and find another method to dispose of the plutonium. Wilson claims that the administration’s proposal is unconstitutional, arguing that the proposed suspension of the project is the administration’s way of shutting down the program, despite Congress’s refusal to defund the program. “There is no legal path open to DOE or NNSA [National Nuclear Security Administration] that would allow avoiding expending funds on construction of the MOX Facility and instead using these monies to place the MOX Facility into ‘cold standby,’” Wilson wrote in court papers filed last week.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said he is reviewing alternative ways to dispose of the plutonium. U.S. and Russian officials have considered consuming the plutonium in fast reactors or mixing the plutonium with other waste to make it unusable. Referring to a meeting with the director general of Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, Moniz said, “I must say he was open to that consultation. Now of course it’s a little more complicated in our dealings with Russia.”
Moniz hopes the current Ukrainian crisis will not diminish the efforts to secure weapons-grade materials. “We have to hope that no matter how all of the issues surrounding the Ukraine play out, that we don’t have as collateral damage a significant slowdown of this critically important work of continuing to get a hold of, to control, to eliminate when possible nuclear-weapons usable material around the world,” he said. “It remains central, certainly, to our security and to that of just about everybody else.”
The NNSA and other federal agencies have until 1 May 2014 to respond to South Carolina’s motion.
