The Nuclear Regulatory Commission lauded CB&I AREVA MOX Services, which is building the embattled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, for its construction program and oversight in an assessment of the contractor’s construction activities and safety performance during 2016.
The regulatory body said in a March 2 letter to CB&I AREVA MOX Services that the MOX facility “was being constructed in a manner that preserved public health and safety and was consistent with the Commission’s rules and regulations.” The contractor’s construction program was “sufficiently implemented to support ongoing construction activities,” its management and quality assurance oversight was effective, and its corrective action program activities were “deemed satisfactory,” the assessment said.
On the quality assurance program, the NRC noted past performance issues in relation to “supplier evaluations and control of purchased material, equipment, and services.” Specifically, the NRC in 2016 found structural welding issues at the facility involving roughly 100 welded ledger assemblies that were installed with deficiencies, falling short of quality assurance requirements. These parts required full capacity repairs.
Meanwhile, for the other assessment areas – including construction oversight – the NRC said it did not identify any specific performance issues.
The MOX facility under construction at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., is intended to eliminate 34 metric tons of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium under a nonproliferation agreement with Russia. The Barack Obama administration pushed to terminate the project in favor of an alternative plutonium dilution and disposal method, which Congress has so far resisted. President Donald Trump’s administration must now decide the future of MOX.
The contractor recently received less than 9 percent of the possible award fee in its fiscal 2016 performance evaluation from the National Nuclear Security Administration. The agency said CB&I AREVA’s cost, schedule, and technical performance were “unsatisfactory” and that there was a “lack of transparency and openness in external communications with key project stakeholders by the contractor including continued release of misleading and inaccurate project information.”
