The House of Representatives’ version of the Department of Energy funding bill for fiscal 2018 would again defy the agency’s intention to kill its Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina.
The House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee on Wednesday approved its $37.56 billion spending legislation, which would provide $340 million for construction of the plant at DOE’s Savannah River Site. If approved, the measure would help fulfill the United States’ commitment under the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement with Russia to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium, committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing said.
The MOX plant would convert the material into commercial reactor fuel. However, DOE says it has identified a much cheaper, faster disposal route. For the budget year starting Oct. 1, it requested $270 million to terminate the project, along with $9 million to research its plan to mix the plutonium with inert materials and store the processed substance at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
The Department of Energy has already spent about $5 billion on the MOX facility, which it says is roughly 40 percent complete (project contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services puts the figure at 70 percent). The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates the facility will cost $17.2 billion to complete by 2048, while the contractor says it will be $10 billion by 2029.
In its fiscal 2018 budget plan, the White House said the new disposal route would prevent $5 billion to $9 billion in new construction costs and additional billions in operational expenses while wrapping up disposal years ahead of time.
However, House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) last week appeared skeptical of DOE’s assertion regarding potential savings from the “dilute and dispose” alternative. “[T]here’s a lot of things that they left out of the cost of dilute and dispose, such as transportation, such as keeping WIPP open, and long-term storage at WIPP, and so forth,” he told Energy Secretary Rick Perry during a hearing on the DOE spending proposal.
Congress has for years resisted DOE’s efforts to halt the MOX project, providing $340 million for construction in the current budget through Sept. 30.
There was no word Thursday on when the full House Appropriations Committee would take up the energy and water bill, which would in total provide $13.9 billion for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. That amount, meeting the Trump administration request, would include $10.2 billion for NNSA nuclear weapons activities and $1.8 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation operations.
The Senate Appropriations energy and water panel has not yet released its corresponding spending legislation nor set its markup schedule.
The two chambers’ Armed Services committees on Wednesday also kept the door open for MOX as they passed their respective versions of the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Both bills, however, offered DOE an escape hatch.
The House Armed Services Committee bill, approved just seconds before midnight after a 14-hour markup session, says the energy secretary “shall carry out construction and project support activities relating to the MOX facility using funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or otherwise made available for fiscal year 2018 for the National Nuclear Security Administration for the MOX facility for construction and project support activities.”
Corresponding language appears in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s marked-up defense bill, said spokeswoman Rachel Hoff. The full text of the Senate NDAA has not been released, but should be posted shortly after Congress returns from its Independence Day recess, Hoff said.
The chairman’s mark of the House NDAA would allow the energy secretary to waive the construction requirement for the MOX facility, but only upon submitting several findings to both chambers’ Armed Services committees. These include demonstrating that there is an alternative to MOX and that the full life-cycle cost of that option would be under half the anticipated remaining expense of the program.
The Department of Energy would also have to show that it has sought talks “with any relevant State” – meaning Russia — on non-MOX options for plutonium disposition. Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled his nation out of the deal last year, citing Washington’s plan to change the agreed-upon MOX disposal route as partial justification.
The Senate legislation offers similar opportunities to waive the MOX mandate, Hoff said: specifically, that DOE has found a less-expensive means of plutonium disposal and an alternate use for the MOX facility. It would be up to DOE to determine what those options might be, she said.
The full House and Senate will take up the NDAAs after the upcoming break, and ultimately the bills will have to be reconciled.
The House NDAA would also authorize a small additional boost in spending for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration beyond what it has requested for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The agency in total requested $13.9 million, but would be authorized for up to $14.2 million. The NNSA’s weapons activities would be authorized at up to $10.4 million, compared to the $10.2 million ask; defense nuclear nonproliferation would be authorized at $1.9 million, compared to the agency’s $1.8 million request.
