MOX PROJECT GETS BOOST IN SENATE VERSION OF FY 2014 DEFENSE AUTH. ACT

The Senate Armed Services Committee authorized $583 million for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility as part of its version of the Fiscal Year 2014 Defense Authorization Act, increasing the authorized funding for the project by $80 million in an effort to keep the program afloat while a review of the project is conducted. The Administration cut funding for the project this year, slowing work on the project to study its plutonium disposition options, but that decision drew heavy criticism from South Carolina’s Congressional delegation, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R). Graham, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he opposed any alternatives to the MOX facility, at one point putting a hold on the nomination of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz over his concerns. He was influential in drafting language in the bill, which called for the NNSA to consider the investments already made on the project as well as ways to lower cost and find efficiencies in the current program as part of its alternatives study. The committee released details about its markup of the bill late Friday, but the complete legislation won’t be published until later this week. The Administration’s approach to cut funding for the project, which already triggered notices of planned layoffs by contractor Shaw AREVA MOX Services, amounted to “a death by 1,000 cuts that would send the program into a nuclear death spiral like the [deferred] Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility” that had been planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory, a Congressional aide told NW&M Monitor. “We wanted to ensure that the program was going to remain able to conduct its mission while this strategic review went forward,” the aide added.