The prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) has demanded in federal court that its customer quickly return more than $20 million in contract fees the agency voided in 2016.
It was the latest turn in a $200-million lawsuit CB&I AREVA MOX Services filed against DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration in August and amended in November. The company claims the agency’s bad decisions are to blame for delays in completing the MOX plant at the agency’s Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The facility is supposed to turn 34 metric tons of U.S. weapon-grade plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel under an arms control pact finalized with Russia in 2010.
In a Dec. 27 memo filed in U.S. Court of Federal Claims, CB&I AREVA MOX Services reiterated its claim that the NNSA was not allowed to claw back more than $20 million in fees earned between 2008 and 2010 because the facility is not yet finished.
“There is no contract provision that states that NNSA is allowed to claw back provisional Incentive Fee before physical completion of the MFFF,” CB&I AREVA MOX Services stated in a memo explaining its request for partial summary judgment in the lawsuit. If granted, the motion would provide about a tenth of the overall damages the contractor seeks from the NNSA.
In the same motion, CB&I AREVA asked Judge Thomas Wheeler to order the NNSA to pay some $2.25 million in legal fees the company racked up in 2015, when it directly appealed to the agency to modify the MFFF contract to ease some of the blown deadlines.
The NNSA had not filed a response to its contractor’s motion at deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, though Wheeler has ordered the agency to do so by Feb. 1. An NNSA spokesperson in Washington declined to comment on the case, citing agency policy against discussing active litigation.
CB&I AREVA MOX Services began work on the MFFF contract in 2000 and started physically building the facility in 2007. The contract was rebaselined in 2012, at which time the contractor thought the plant would be built in late 2018. However, even the most optimistic estimates publicly available show the facility will not be finished until the middle of the next decade. The NNSA has already spent about $5 billion on the MFFF.
Both the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations have asked Congress to cancel the project, citing rising costs. Lawmakers have so far not acquiesced to the request. In the latter half of this decade, both the United States and Russia have gravitated toward other options for disposing of surplus weapon-grade plutonium.
