Former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) on Monday laid into a report commissioned by the Department of Energy’s lead MOX fuel facility contractor that questioned the suitability of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant as a storage site for downblended plutonium.
In a commentary sent to media outlets, Domenici charged that CB&I AREVA MOX Services is using “junk science” in making its case to sustain construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The Obama administration’s fiscal 2017 budget proposal calls for canceling the MOX program in favor of using existing facilities at SRS to dilute surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium and then storing the material at the transuranic waste storage site in New Mexico. DOE says the new plan will save years and tens of billions of dollars in dealing with the plutonium.
High Bridge, in a report issued last month, warned that over time the salt caverns in which the waste at WIPP is stored could close in on the plutonium containers, potentially causing a “critical chain reaction.” The DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories, in reviewing an executive summary of the High Bridge report, said the chain reaction scenario was “not credible.”
“Objective research on all of America’s nuclear facilities remains a high priority with all of us that have fought for nuclear energy all of our careers,” stated Domenici, now a senior fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center. “My work with the national laboratories gives me great confidence that when they reject a study, they are doing it in an objective and data-driven manner.”
Appropriators in Congress this week rejected DOE’s plan in a pair of fiscal 2017 spending bills. Neither the House nor the Senate weighed in on the scientific merits of DOE’s proposal to move more plutonium to WIPP, but both provided funding for the MOX program in their latest energy and water budgets. The House kept the project funding flat compared with 2016 at $340 million. The Senate proposed $270 million.
High Bridge, meanwhile, has come out hard in defense of its report, which the consulting shop maintains has been unfairly maligned on Capitol Hill on the basis of what amounts to a cursory glance at the document’s executive summary by Sandia scientists.
“Sandia National Laboratory reviewed a preliminary Executive Summary of our report issued on January 29, 2016 and took issue with this conclusion,” Charlie Hess, a High Bridge vice president and former CB&I executive, wrote in an Thursday email to Weapons Complex Monitor. “Had Sandia reviewed the High Bridge detailed report issued on March 2, 2016 that included the Studsvik analysis, we believe Sandia would have come to different conclusions.”
Hess added that “High Bridge would welcome the opportunity to meet with Sandia to further discuss our report and conclusions.”
Studsvik Scandpower is a Swedish nuclear firm that contributed to the High Bridge report. The Swedish company’s analysis of the storage method DOE is considering for 34 metric tons of downblended plutonium was the basis for High Bridge’s assertion that, in the distant future, there could be an unplanned nuclear reaction at WIPP. This analysis was not part of the draft Sandia reviewed and commented on to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who subsequently relayed to Congress — in February budget hearings — the national lab’s opinion that High Bridge’s conclusions were “simplistic” and “not credible.”
In the end, nuclear physics may not be the greatest obstacle to disposing of more weapon-usable material at WIPP. Most of the key lawmakers who need to buy in for DOE’s plan to get any traction are lukewarm on the idea. One, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is intractably hostile to any plan that does not involve finishing the MOX plant in his home state.
Weapons Complex Monitor staff reporter Dan Leone contributed to this report.
