A lawsuit between the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the prime contractor for a canceled plutonium-disposal plant in South Carolina is on hold for the duration of the partial government shutdown, according to a filing with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Judge Thomas Wheeler last week granted the unopposed motion to stay the lawsuit MOX Services brought in 2016 against the NNSA over the agency’s decision to cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The Justice Department has had no appropriation from Congress since Dec. 22, when funding for several federal agencies expired and President Donald Trump refused to approve any budget bill that did not include funding for a wall along the U.S. southern border.
“Absent an appropriation, Department of Justice attorneys … are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including ‘emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,’” the U.S. attorney representing the NNSA wrote in the government’s motion for a stay.
The partial government shutdown in its 28th day, at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. Neither the White House nor Congress had announced any compromise.
The MFFF was designed to turn 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into commercial reactor fuel, under a reciprocal arms-control pact the United States and Russia signed in 2000. After spending $5 billion on the project, the NNSA decided the project was too expensive and asked Congress to cancel the project in 2016.
MOX Services subsequently sued the NNSA, claiming the agency created the very delays and cost-overruns for which it blamed the contractor. The contractor wants more than $200 million in damages and withheld fees from the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency. The case is set for trial in April.
Even if awarded, the damages would not bring back the MFFF; the NNSA canceled the prime contract in October, and MOX Services has been laying off workers ever since.
