A federal judge declined to give the former prime contractor of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility any relief from federal fraud claims, even though the company argued it had already paid back some of the money the government sued to recover, according to a recent filing in the U.S. District Court for South Carolina.
The federal government sued CB&I AREVA MOX SERVICES in 2019, seeking some $19 million in damages and costs related to fraudulent claims by a MOX Services subcontractor dating back to 2008. MOX Services claimed it had already paid back a portion of that sum — about $6.5 million — to DOE in 2018, when the government clawed back some $34 million in disallowed costs on the contract to build the now-cancelled plutonium recycling facility.
On those grounds, MOX Services asked Senior Judge Terry Wooten for a summary judgement that would block DOE from recovering the money the company said it already paid back: about a third of the sum sought in the 2019 lawsuit. In a December order, Wooten declined on legal grounds to grant the judgement, writing that he would only have the option to do so if MOX Services and the government agreed on the facts of the case.
Which, Wooten said, they do not.
In a November filing opposing MOX Services’ push for summary judgement, the federal government said the $34 million it collected in 2018 was “almost entirely irrelevant” to the 2019 lawsuit.
MOX Services and the feds have until June 1 to settle the government’s lawsuit. If they do not, the case will go to trial some time after November 1.
DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration officially cancelled the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in 2018 after years of asking Congress permission to do so. The partially constructed plant 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.
