U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) said Monday he expects Congress to restore funding for the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) when lawmakers return to Washington next week. Members of the House and Senate entered into conference committee in July to hash out details of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA); Wilson, one of the conferees, said they may wrap up discussions as early as next week.
The MFFF would convert 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel. The United States is bound to eliminate the material under a bilateral nonproliferation deal that requires Russia to get rid of an equal-sized stockpile.
But the Obama administration’s fiscal 2017 federal budget proposal looks to terminate the project and move forward with downblending, an option that would dilute the plutonium using SRS facilities and store the material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The Energy Department says the MOX life-cycle cost is $51 billion, including nearly $5 billion already spent. The agency says downblending would only cost $17 billion.
Wilson and other members of the South Carolina congressional delegation have denounced those figures, as has MOX contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services, whose board of governors commissioned a study last year that priced the project at $19 billion and downblending at $20 billion.
Both the House and Senate were seeking authorization for $340 million in their respective NDAAs to continue construction of MFFF before entering conference committee. The House passed its version of the NDAA in May and the Senate in June. “I feel good about getting that funding, and even if we get into a continuing resolution (CR), every effort will be made to keep that wording for construction,” Wilson said on Monday. “It’s in the interest of the American people to continue with MOX.”
