The governor of South Carolina this week promised a court challenge if the Department of Energy cancels the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) under construction in his state, or turns the planned plutonium-disposal plant into a new weapons facility.
The sprawling facility, billions over budget and years behind schedule, is being built to turn 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into commercial reactor fuel as part of an arms control pact with Russia. The Department of Energy has said it has a cheaper, better way to dispose of the plutonium, and the still-unfinished MFFF could be converted into a production facility for plutonium pits: fissile nuclear-weapon cores.
In a May 2 letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Gov. Henry McMaster (R) dismissed the promise of pit production as an attempt “to pacify South Carolina” with jobs that would not materialize “for upwards of 10 years” after the agency closes down the MOX project.
South Carolina will use “all legal recourse available” to prevent DOE from closing down the MFFF, McMaster wrote in the letter, a copy of which Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor obtained Thursday. The local Aiken Standard newspaper first reported on the letter.
Though dismissive of the pit mission as a substitute for the MFFF, McMaster has supported Savannah River taking on plutonium production in addition to the original plutonium conversion mission. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has also said he wants both the pit and the plutonium-disposal work at Savannah River.
Graham and his colleague Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) — both copied on McMaster’s letter to Perry, along with Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) — declined to back the South Carolina governor’s legal threat publicly this week. Spokespersons for both senators did not reply to requests for comment.
A DOE spokesperson likewise did not reply to a request for comment about McMaster’s letter.
The same day McMaster signed his letter, a DOE official said the agency was nearly finished with a cost estimate for the agency’s proposed alternative to the MFFF: an approach called dilute and dispose. The Energy Department has asked Congress to fund dilute and dispose for three years now, but lawmakers refused until last year, when they said the agency could move ahead with the alternative as long as it costs half of what it would cost to finish the plant.
The dilute-and-dispose cost estimate, the central pillar of that proof, should be delivered to Congress in June, or “June-ish,” Virginia Kay, deputy director of the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Material Disposition, told NS&D Monitor after a presentation to a National Academy of Sciences panel Wednesday.
Under dilute-and-dispose, DOE would chemically treat the plutonium and mix it with concrete-like grout at the Savannah River Site. The department would then ship the material to its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
The Energy Department is not calculating shipping costs as part of the dilute-and-dispose life-cycle estimate it hopes to send to Capitol Hill in June, but the agency will include a separate estimate of transportation costs based on internal agency data, Kay said.
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chairman of the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee that writes the first draft of DOE’s annual budget bill, has repeatedly warned the agency not to cut corners or omit any expenses from its dilute-and-dispose cost estimate.
Simpson’s committee is set to unveil its 2019 funding recommendations for the Department of Energy on Monday: well before the dilute-and-dispose report is expected on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, DOE was expected to brief Congress about its plans to possibly move some plutonium pit production to the Savannah River Site.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will manufacture some of the 80 pits a year the Defense Department requires beginning in 2026. Savannah River could be responsible for the rest, depending on what DOE decides.
