Seeking to cut the time it will spend in court, the Department of Energy last week asked a federal judge to consolidate five lawsuits filed against the agency by the prime contractor on a long-delayed plutonium-disposal plant in South Carolina.
CB&I AREVA MOX Services first sued the Department of Energy (DOE) in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in 2016, claiming the agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration mismanaged the company’s contract to build the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. That mismanagement put the facility, which was supposed to open in 2016, billions of dollars over budget and more than a decade behind schedule, the company alleged.
MOX Services has filed four additional lawsuits with the Court of Federal Claims: one in December, two in January, and one in April. All claim DOE mismanagement of the MFFF contract awarded in 1999 to MOX Services’ corporate predecessor, Duke Cogema, Stone & Webster.
In a May 2 motion to consolidate, DOE said the court would save time and money if it considered all of the lawsuits at once, rather than proceeding piecemeal:“Because MOX Services’s complaints raise common questions of law and fact, and proceeding separately would cause the unnecessary expenditure of limited resources by the parties and Court, consolidation of these five cases is appropriate.”
In total, MOX Services seeks roughly $200 million in damages and fees from DOE. The agency says the contractor is to blame for failing to reach agreed-upon milestones in its contract.
The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility was designed to turn 34 metric tons of plutonium into commercial reactor fuel under an arms-control pact with Russia. Since 2015, DOE has sought to cancel the facility and instead bury the plutonium — after diluting it and encasing it in cement — at the agency’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Congress has refused to approve the plan.
MOX Services had not filed a response at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
