The Environmental Protection Agency told an official South Carolina nuclear-advisory body there is nothing the federal agency can do, for now, to prevent the Department of Energy from proceeding with its plan to cancel a multibillion-dollar nonproliferation project at the Savannah River Site in the state.
That is according to a letter dated April 2 to Rick Lee, chairman of the South Carolina Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council, from Jonathan Edwards, director of the EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air.
Lee, in a late February letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, said DOE’s plan to dispose of 34 metric tons of processed plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., might run afoul of federal law. The deep-underground mine was not authorized by Congress to hold as much plutonium as the agency wants to put there, and DOE had not performed legally required reviews to quantify the environmental effect of processing the plutonium for burial at WIPP, Lee said.
The EPA, however, said DOE has provided all the WIPP reviews so far necessary, but more would be needed before its plutonium plan comes to fruition. “There would be many steps and some time before the EPA formally becomes involved in exercising its regulatory responsibilities associated with the possible disposal of the 34 MT [metric tons] of plutonium at the WIPP,” Edwards wrote in his letter.
In its past three budget requests, DOE has asked Congress permission to cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction at the Savannah River Site, which was supposed to convert the 34 metric tons of plutonium into commercial reactor fuel as part of an arms control pact with Russia. The Energy Department says it can save time and money through the “dilute and dispose” method that ultimately takes the plutonium to WIPP.
Congress has never gone along with DOE’s plan to replace the facility with upgrades at Savannah River that could dilute the plutonium enough to make it safe for burial in New Mexico.
In a House hearing Thursday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry stood by the department’s plan, saying the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility was “obscenely over budget.” In 2000, when DOE put the facility under contract, the agency thought it would take $5 billion to complete the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility by 2016. It has already spent that amount on the facility.
Now, DOE estimates it will cost more than $17 billion to finish the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility by 2048. Contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services says it will cost $10 billion to complete by 2029.
MOX Services blames DOE for mismanaging the project and running its cost and schedule off the rails. The company sued its customer in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in 2016 over the alleged mismanagement.
