Senate to Vote on Bill Next Week
Brian Bradley
WC Monitor
10/2/2015
The House of Representatives yesterday passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2016 yesterday by a vote of 270-156, and the Senate plans to vote on its version of the bill next week, in the face of a threatened veto from President Barack Obama. Amid Capitol Hill rumblings of a possible cancellation of the beleaguered Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, the bill would require Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz to re-baseline project construction and support activities for fiscal 2017, and to carry out MOX construction in fiscal 2016 at the Obama administration-requested funding level of $345 million.
Overall, the bill would authorize $5.1 billion for defense environmental cleanup, slightly less than the administration’s $5.2 billion request. Additionally, the bill would allow $8.8 billion for National Nuclear Security Administration weapons activities, compared to the administration’s $8.85 billion fiscal 2016 request, and it would make available $1.942 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation, roughly the same as Obama’s request.
Furthermore on MOX, the bill would authorize another $5 million that the administration did not request, for an analysis of alternatives on plutonium disposition alternatives, according to the report. “The conferees direct that the analysis of alternatives be comprehensive with regard to potentially cost-effective alternatives, and to include as alternatives various options for disposal, including costs and timelines associated with options for down-blending, immobilization, disposal in canisters, and deep borehole disposal,” the report states.
The administration reportedly is weighing whether to cancel MOX construction. While MOX contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services is building 4 percent of the planned facility per year, several sources with knowledge of the situation have referenced a Sept. 18 high-level meeting on plutonium disposition at the White House as one possible sign that the Obama administration could soon cancel the project. The meeting reportedly convened top administration officials, including Defense Department and NNSA brass.
In accord with a 2000 nonproliferation agreement with Russia, the MOX plant is to be used to process 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium, but there has been increasing talk of instead “downblending” the material. The Energy Department has chartered several recent reviews that have identified MOX’s primary alternative as the most cost-effective and practical way forward. MOX supporters counter that 70 percent of the facility is already done, and that it would be tough to renegotiate the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement with Russia, given current geopolitical circumstances.
