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, gear, and 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.
