CB&I AREVA MOX Services, the contractor managing construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility near Aiken, S.C., said in a new letter to the National Nuclear Security Administration that the agency regularly obstructs MOX construction in an effort to terminate the project.
NS&D Monitor obtained the March 8 letter, a response to the NNSA’s stinging fiscal 2016 performance evaluation of the contractor, from a source on Capitol Hill.
“When we first reviewed NNSA’s evaluation narrative last year, we were shocked at the hostile and unbalanced tone of the document, which contained numerous assertions that are at variance with the facts and made no mention of the obstacles NNSA has thrown up to the efficient construction of the facility,” the letter said. It contrasted NNSA’s review with that of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which early this month gave the contractor a positive review for its construction of the facility.
The NNSA late last month released the fiscal 2016 evaluation, in which CB&I AREVA earned just 8.9 percent of its possible award fee for the last budget year, in part due to “unsatisfactory” cost, schedule, and technical performance.
The MOX project is intended to eliminate 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium under a nuclear nonproliferation deal with Russia. The previous administration tried to terminate the project, proposing in its place an alternative plutonium dilution and disposal method it said would be less costly and more timely, but faced resistance in Congress. The Trump administration will determine the fate of the project.
“Unfortunately, daily interference and obstruction by NNSA’s Acquisition and Project Management organization continues crippling construction, slowing physical progress, significantly increasing costs, and creating unnecessary delays,” the contractor said.
The letter also noted that the NNSA has required that it approve all construction procurements worth more than $500,000 and equipment procurements more than $150,000, while in the past only those over $15 million required agency authorization. “This has significantly hampered the procurement process and resulted in numerous procurements being denied,” it said.
The contractor added that with an appropriate level of annual funding, “we believe we have approximately $3 billion to go to complete the MOX facility.”
