Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
11/13/2015
The state of South Carolina is mulling legal options in responding to a key plutonium disposal milestone the Department of Energy will miss at the Savannah River Site’s controversial Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). The state’s decision could include the attempted levying of millions of dollars in fines over the missed milestone. The MFFF is an integral part of the overall MOX project, the nation’s current pathway for meeting its agreement with Russia under which each country must dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium. The U.S. method is MOX, which would convert the plutonium into commercial reactor fuel so the nation could earn back some of the project cost by selling the fuel to buyers.
Construction of the MFFF began in 2007 after the Department of Energy inked a deal with South Carolina in 2002 for the state to help support the international efforts of reducing the weapons’ threat. That agreement included a promise made by President Bill Clinton in 2002 that either 1 metric ton of the plutonium would be removed from the state or processed through the MFFF by Jan. 1, 2016. Neither is expected to occur by then since construction of the facility is only 70 percent complete, according to contractor CB&I MOX Services, and no plans have been made to remove any of the plutonium.
The deadline is less than two months away, but South Carolina believes it is too early to begin speculating on whether it will levy fines from the missed milestone. Fines under the contract would be $1 million a day beginning Jan. 1. "The state is exploring various options. It would be premature and inappropriate to comment at this time," said Mark Powell, a spokesman for South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson.
Construction of the MFFF has been plagued by cost overruns and delays over the years, with recent expense projections for the life-cycle cost of the MOX project totaling $51 billion, according to a congressionally mandated study conducted by Aerospace Corp. CB&I officials responded that the life-cycle cost is closer to $17 billion. SRS Watch Director Tom Clements on Thursday highlighted some of the troubles at the MFFF in a report titled, "H Canyon Folly, Plutonium Failure." The report focuses on the upcoming missed milestone as well as concerns over the SRS H Canyon facility, which is expected to process plutonium to make the MOX solution. But the facility shouldn’t be used for MOX-related work due to other necessary missions and the aging infrastructure at the facility, according to Clements. "If DOE resumes plutonium oxide production and tries to push its facilities and personnel to catch up with illusive production goals, fragile operations in the HB-Line will be put to an unnecessary and potentially dangerous test," Clements wrote in a statement released with the report.
Controversy over the MOX project pushed President Barack Obama to propose a cold standby to freeze construction of the MFFF in March 2014 for fiscal 2015. The proposal created concerns and confusion on when the potential slowdown or work freeze would commence and was ultimately met two weeks later with a lawsuit from Wilson’s office and Gov. Nikki Haley on the premise that Obama’s proposal would break promises made to the state of South Carolina. The state dropped the suit two months later after Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz promised that construction would continue through the remainder of the fiscal year. Eventually, Obama’s $221 million request to freeze the program was replaced with $345 million in funding for continued construction of the MFFF.
The Department of Energy reported this week that it is still working to meet its commitment to South Carolina. Energy officials referenced an April 2015 release of the Final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement analyzing the environmental impacts of disposing of up to 13.1 metric tons of surplus plutonium. The statement concluded that there were no preferred alternative to MOX, but that "once a preferred alternative is identified, DOE will announce its preference in a federal register notice." The department is expected to state its preferred method of plutonium disposition following the public release of the second Aerospace study, which was originally projected for September. Part 1 was released in April and concluded that downblending the plutonium and storing the final solution at a repository would be significantly cheaper than moving forward with the MOX method. Part 2 was released to Congress last month and focuses on several other alternatives.
