It remained unclear at press time Friday whether the Department of Energy had delivered by its Monday deadline new details about the agency’s cost and schedule estimates for the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In early May, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) requested more details in a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. A DOE spokesperson said May 27 the agency would comply with the request by May 31, but representatives for McCain and Reed did not reply to queries Thursday regarding whether DOE had actually delivered. A DOE spokesperson also did not reply to a request for comment Thursday.
McCain and Reed asked DOE not for the full MOX cost estimate, but to explain whether the agency was allowing plant prime CB&I AREVA MOX Services any input into the department’s updated projection.
Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act required DOE to update its cost and schedule estimates for the MOX plant, which the Obama administration proposed canceling as part of its fiscal 2017 budget request. Number crunching for the cost estimate is underway, but “the effort to develop this updated information has not, to our knowledge, included additional meetings between federal and contractor staff to exchange views and better inform the updated cost and schedule estimates,” McCain and Reed wrote.
As part of an arms-control pact finalized with Russia in 2010, the MOX plant would convert 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium into fuel suitable for commercial nuclear reactors.
A May 5 report by Greensboro, Ga.-based High Bridge Associates — the consulting firm repeatedly hired by CB&I AREVA MOX Services — said finishing the plant and processing surplus plutonium there would cost about $20 billion and take fewer than 30 years. DOE says it would cost $45 billion or more and take more than 30 years.
