Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
09/25/2015
Former Energy Secretary and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson this week said he plans to ask political leaders from Idaho and Washington state to join him in pushing construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina.
The MOX plant is to be used to process 34 metric tons of weapon-grade uranium, but there has been increasing talk of instead “downblending” the material to meet the United States’ commitment to a 2000 nonproliferation deal with Russia. Richardson argued, though, that shipping the diluted material to the currently nonoperational Waste Isolation Pilot Plant could impede transuranic waste shipments from the Hanford Site and the Idaho Cleanup Project destined for that New Mexico facility.
“The delay would be horrendous for shipping some of that waste from those states,” Richardson said Tuesday during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Most Capitol Hill offices of Washington and Idaho congressional leaders did not return requests for comment, but as of yesterday, Richardson had not contacted the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, whose ranking member is Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) or House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho).
Pending WIPP’s reopening, specific dates and formal approval of further shipments from Idaho and Washington are uncertain.
Richardson last month sent a letter urging Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to push DOE to move forward with MOX. The plutonium disposition debate has recently grown more intense, after a DOE-chartered review of plutonium disposition options completed last month largely favored downblending, or “dilution and disposal,” as the preferred disposition approach from the standpoints of cost and practicality. DOE is deciding whether it will cancel MOX and start dilution and disposal, or continue with the MOX approach. MOX contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services estimates the facility is about 70 percent complete.
Richardson’s latest comments also came one day after capital project consulting firm High Bridge Associates released a review of the DOE-chartered Red Team report. Ordered by CB&I AREVA MOX, High Bridge’s review claimed that August’s Red Team report—which largely favored dilution and disposal as the most cost-effective method for plutonium disposition—had a short deadline and was “rushed” by the Energy Department.
Signed in 2000, the U.S.-Russian Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement requires each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium through the MOX method, or through any other future arrangement agreed to in writing. Addressing the question of how simple it would be for the U.S. and Russia to agree on a new U.S. disposal method, High Bridge stated, “The Red Team incorrectly concluded that renegotiating the PMDA to accept the Dilute and Dispose Option will be a simple matter and identified no cost or schedule impacts: The Russian Federation has insisted on changing the isotopic makeup of plutonium for disposition; The Russian Federation is more concerned with the U.S. military than with terrorists or rogue states; The PMDA would have to be renegotiated first before Dilute and Dispose could be started; The previous amendment to the PMDA required 5 years to negotiate.”
According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the most recent PMDA amendment, added in April 2010, codified a revised Russian plutonium disposition program based on using fast reactors for irradiating the plutonium. The amendment obligates the U.S. to provide up to $400 million to support plutonium disposition in Russia, with Moscow financing the rest of its program, estimated to cost more than $3 billion. Richardson cited the volatile U.S.-Russian relationship and variable geopolitical climate as potential roadblocks to restructuring the PMDA again, this time to allow the U.S. to dilute and dispose of the plutonium. “I think it would jeopardize our foreign policy relationship with Russia, which is already very tense and not good,” he said. “Russia is an important player in nuclear materials and plutonium, and it would be a bad mistake. Why would the Russians want to renegotiate something that’s already working?”
As Congress is reportedly mulling a three-month continuing resolution to start fiscal 2016, DOE and Congress have not confirmed whether the legislation would fund MOX at its fiscal 2015 level of $345 million. The Obama administration also requested $345 million to fund the project in fiscal 2016, but DOE has since revisited the issue, ordering several plutonium disposition studies to ensure the most cost-effective and practical plutonium disposition path forward.
