The lead attorney at the Savannah River Site was honored by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for helping the agency pivot away from processing surplus weapon-usable plutonium at the South Carolina facility’s now-canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF).
Mary-Ellen Noone, counsel for the NNSA Savannah River Field Office, won the NNSA General Counsel Legal Excellence Award “for her ongoing legal support of NNSA’s Mixed Oxide (MOX) Project and the Plutonium Disposition Program,” according to an Oct. 31 NNSA press release.
Noone has supported the Department of Justice as it defended the NNSA and the Department of Energy in several pending lawsuits in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the U.S. District Court for South Carolina. In separate lawsuits, the state of South Carolina and MFFF construction and operations prime MOX Services have sought to block the NNSA’s plan to turn the plant into a factory for plutonium nuclear-warhead cores, or pits.
“All of Mary-Ellen’s accomplishments are due to her high level of professionalism and her ability to operate collaboratively with legal and professional staff throughout the government,” NNSA General Counsel Bruce Diamond said in the press release. “Her efforts demonstrate legal thoroughness, scholarship, ethical sensitivities and integrity. I am proud to recognize the achievements of this dedicated counsel.”
Under a 2000 arms-control agreement with Russia, the MFFF was designed to turn 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.
In 2016, the NNSA asked Congress to cancel the plant, saying the project had grown far too expensive. The agency proposed to instead dispose of the surplus plutonium using a method it called dilute-and-dispose: chemically weakening the plutonium at planned Savannah River facilities, mixing it with concrete-like grout called stardust, and burying the mixture deep underground at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
The NNSA formally terminated MOX Services’ prime contrac on Oct. 11. Lawsuits filed by South Carolina remain pending in the Federal Claims Court and the District Court. A lawsuit filed by MOX Services is pending in the Federal Claims Court.
