The prime contractor of a canceled plutonium-disposal plant in South Carolina cried foul in a long-running lawsuit against its client, the National Nuclear Security Administration, after the government allegedly broke a promise not to dispute certain costs claimed under the nearly 20-year-old contract.
MOX Services said the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) disputed more than $500,000 in claimed costs related to electrical work performed at the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) in 2015, according to a motion for a status conference the contractor filed Nov. 14 with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Judge Thomas Wheeler granted that motion, which the NNSA did not oppose, and scheduled a telephonic status update for Tuesday. MOX Services alleged the agency violated a tolling agreement signed Oct. 10, under which the government would be allowed to pursue claims against the contractor arising from costs billed in 2011 and beyond, so long as the government waited to do so until after the lawsuit concludes.
The suit is slated to go to trial in April 2019.
MOX Services sued the NNSA in 2016, alleging the agency was responsible for a series of cost overruns and schedule misses at the MFFF. The agency blamed the contractor at least in part for those failures, which the government eventually cited in its Oct. 10 decision to cancel of the nonproliferation plant. The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency has spent some $5 billion on MFFF so far. MOX Services seeks more than $200 billion in damages and withheld fees.
So far, the lawsuit has mostly broken MOX Services’ way. Wheeler has directed some sharp language at the NNSA from the bench, lambasting the agency for “baseless retaliation” against the contractor as part of a decision this spring that required the agency to return some $20 million in withheld fees to MOX Services.
The NNSA plans to turn MFFF into a factory capable of annually producing 50 fissile warhead cores called plutonium pits by 2030. The plant was designed to turn 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into commercial reactor fuel under a reciprocal arms-control pact with Russia that was signed in 2000.
MOX Services this month said it would lay off about 600 plant employees by early January.
