Push Continues for MOX Construction
NS&D Monitor
4/25/2014
As South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) this week hailed a lawsuit the state has filed opposing the proposed suspension of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, members of the state’s Congressional delegation took credit for avoiding 1,000 layoffs at the site. The state filed suit last month in the U.S. District Court for South Carolina soon after the Department of Energy’s announcement that it would immediately suspend work on the facility, but the Department still has not provided any shutdown direction to the project’s contractor, Shaw AREVA MOX Services, on the move. “MOX is 60 percent complete, and once again the rug was pulled out from under us. That was a promise that had been made,” Haley said this week following a tour of the Savannah River Site. “That’s the frustrating part, look at the progress made and then look at the promises made and look at everything that has been lost. It is why we have to get creative. That’s why you are seeing the lawsuit against the Administration saying you can’t do this once again.”
The National Nuclear Security Administration had planned to work with contractor Shaw AREVA MOX Services in March on a plan to put the facility in “cold standby,” according to DOE’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, but that has not occurred yet. Last week, South Carolina filed for a motion for summary judgement in the suit, and the legal proceedings could delay any shutdown work. This week the NNSA did not respond to request for comment on MOX. But South Carolina lawmakers say they have had a hand in avoiding layoffs. “They promised us that they would not layoff workers until we had a chance to fix the budget. The plan was, two weeks ago, to layoff over 1,000 workers. They were basically going to go ahead and implement the budget cuts, and we convinced them not to lay the workforce off until the Congress had a chance to fix this,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said this week, according to the Aiken Standard. Graham’s office did not respond to a request for comment this week.
