Former DOE Secretary Appealing to Wash., Idaho Leaders to Support MOX

Former Energy Secretary and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is asking political leaders from Idaho and Washington state to join him in pushing construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. During a speech yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington, Richardson argued that ”downblending,” or diluting and disposing, of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, and shipping the resultant material to the yet-to-be-reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant could impede transuranic waste shipments from the Hanford Site and the Idaho Cleanup Project destined for that New Mexico facility.

 

“The delay would be horrendous for shipping some of that waste from those states,” he said. Pending WIPP’s reopening, specific dates of those shipments remain unknown, and formal approval remains distant. Signed in 2000, the U.S.-Russia Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement requires each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium through the MOX method, or through any other future arrangement agreed to in writing.

 

Richardson’s words come a month after he sent a letter urging Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to push DOE to move forward with MOX, and one day after capital project consulting firm High Bridge Associates, Inc., released its “Review of the Final Report of the Plutonium Disposition Red Team.” Ordered by MOX contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services, High Bridge’s review claimed that August’s DOE-chartered MOX red team report—which largely favored dilution and disposal as the most cost-effective method for plutonium disposition—had a short deadline and was “rushed” by the Energy Department. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in June directed the red team to finish its review on the viability of MOX and other plutonium disposal methods by Aug. 10. DOE later extended that deadline by a week to give the red team adequate time to complete the report.

 

Addressing the question of how simple it would be for the U.S. and Russia to reach an agreement for a new U.S. disposal method, High Bridge stated, “The Red Team incorrectly concluded that renegotiating the PMDA to accept the Dilute and Dispose Option will be a simple matter and identified no cost or schedule impacts: The Russian Federation has insisted on changing the isotopic makeup of plutonium for disposition; The Russian Federation is more concerned with the U.S. military than with terrorists or rogue states; The PMDA would have to be renegotiated first before Dilute and Dispose could be started; The previous amendment to the PMDA required 5 years to negotiate.”

 

According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the last PMDA amendment added in April 2010 codified a revised Russian plutonium disposition program based on using fast reactors for irradiating the plutonium. The amendment obligates the U.S. to provide up to $400 million to support plutonium disposition in Russia, and Russia will finance the rest of its program, estimated to be more than $3 billion. Richardson cited the current volatile U.S.-Russia relationship and variable geopolitical climate as potential roadblocks to restructuring the PMDA again, this time to allow the U.S. to dilute and dispose of the plutonium. “I think it would jeopardize our foreign policy relationship with Russia, which is already very tense and not good,” he said. “Russia is an important player in nuclear materials and plutonium, and it would be a bad mistake. Why would the Russians want to renegotiate something that’s already working?”

As Congress is reportedly mulling a three-month continuing resolution to start fiscal 2016, DOE and Congress have not confirmed whether the legislation would fund MOX at its fiscal 2015 level of $345 million. The Obama Administration also requested $345 million to fund the project in fiscal 2016, but DOE has since revisited the issue, ordering several plutonium disposition studies to determine the most cost-effective and practical plutonium disposition path forward.