In a Tuesday hearing of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, panel Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) vented his frustrations at Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz over the White House’s proposal to change a long-established strategy for disposing of 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium.
The White House is obliged under an arms control pact with Russia finalized in 2010 to convert the material into fuel for commercial reactors using the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction at DOE’s Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
Moniz told Simpson the MOX approach is “not viable” given expected DOE budget levels, and that it “is both faster and cheaper” to instead dilute the material, mix it with a solid from which it cannot easily be separated, and store it in a place such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
Simpson, whose committee will write the first draft of DOE’s fiscal 2017 spending bill, said he will not entertain a change in tack on plutonium disposal until all involved parties buy in.
“What I would need to see is a signed agreement with Russia that this is going to be OK. I would want to know that New Mexico is on board [and] that South Carolina is on board,” Simpson told Moniz.
None of those things are close to happening, as both Moniz and Simpson acknowledged at the DOE budget hearing.
By the most conservative public estimate, the MOX Facility is about 50 percent complete. Estimates of its life-cycle cost vary wildly, with dueling figures published last year coming in as low as $17 billion and as high as $51 billion. The White House requested $270 million to close out the facility in 2017. Congress approved $340 million as part of the 2016 omnibus spending bill signed in December and, in a report appended to the legislation, instructed DOE to use the money for construction, not close-out.
Even if Congress approves the White House’s plan, storing the diluted plutonium at WIPP would require, at a minimum, modifying DOE’s waste storage permit with New Mexico — something the agency has not even decided to attempt, DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Monica Regalbuto said last week in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee.
