A federal judge on Monday stood by his earlier ruling that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) must return more than $20 million in fees it clawed back in 2016 from the prime contractor building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Judge Thomas Wheeler of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims handed down the order less than a month after the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency asked him to reconsider his June decision that CB&I AREVA MOX Services was entitled to roughly $20 million in reclaimed fees.
The Department of Energy made the case that the court did not have jurisdiction to hear MOX Services’ claim, and that the contractor had not followed proper procedures in its attempts to recover the fee from the NNSA before resorting to a lawsuit in 2016. Wheeler rejected both arguments in his 15-page amended opinion and order.
The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) is designed to turn 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into commercial reactor fuel as part of a U.S.-Russian arms-control pact finalized in 2010. The plant was supposed to be finished in 2016 and cost about $5 billion. MOX Services now estimates construction will take until 2029 to complete and cost about $10 billion.
The NNSA wants to cancel the plutonium-disposal mission and turn MFFF into a factory capable by 2030 of annually producing 50 fissile nuclear-warhead cores called plutonium pits. South Carolina is fighting that plan in federal court, and the state’s congressional delegation is fighting the plan on Capitol Hill.
