The federal government and the firm it hired to build a now-canceled plutonium recycling plant have one year to settle allegations that the contractor defrauded the Department of Energy, or the case will go before a jury later that year, according to a Wednesday court filing.
In 2019, The Justice Department alleged CB&I AREVA MOX Services had submitted $6.4 million in false invoices based on fraudulent claims from subcontractor Wise Services for work on the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. Wise had multiple subcontracts from MOX Services over eight years starting in 2008 to provide labor, materials, and gear, along with oversight for labor, plumbing, electrical, and other “unplanned construction activities” at the plant, the Justice Department said.
The Justice Department seeks more than $19 million in damages and costs in the civil case. Wise has said a “rogue employee,” Phillip Thompson, was responsible for the alleged fraud. Thompson went to prison after admitting in 2017 that he defrauded the government in a separate matter.
MOX Services likewise said it had no knowledge of the alleged fraud.
Senior Judge Terry Wooten, of U.S. District Court for South Carolina, Aiken Division, gave the parties until June 1, 2021, to complete mediation. Otherwise, jury selection and trial are set for November 2021 or later.
The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration officially terminated the MFFF in 2018 after years of trying to get Congress to go along with the plan. The facility will now be converted into the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility: a factory to annually manufacture at least 50 plutonium pits — fissile nuclear weapon cores — by 2030.
Meanwhile, the agency will dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium once slated to be turned into commercial reactor fuel at the plant with the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program. In that program, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and planned facilities at Savannah River Site’s K-Area will chemically weaken the plutonium, blend it with a classified, inert mixture called stardust, and bury the mixture deep underground at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
SRS Contractor Settles Slip-and-Fall Suit
Separately, a worker at the Savannah River Site this month settled his federal personal injury lawsuit against the Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions: the site management and operations contractor.
Henry Bradley, employed by another contractor at Savannah River, in November 2018 filed the $75,000 suit in U.S. District Court in South Carolina against site manager Savannah River Nuclear Solutions. Bradley said the contractor failed to safely maintain a trailer where he was seriously hurt.
Bradley, a truck driver for liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation, said he was injured on Nov. 15, 2015, when he stepped into a hole on the back of a heavy flatbed truck – referred to as a “trailer” in the lawsuit.
In his complaint, Bradley said he suffered injuries to his groin, spine, and shoulder, which caused him long-term bodily harm and mental suffering.
Terms of the settlement were not mentioned in a one-page order issued by Wooten on May 13, which simply said the court was “advised by counsel for the parties that this case has settled.”
The case will be officially dismissed within 60 days if neither party files a motion to revive it, according to the judge’s order.
