A number of major policy questions must be addressed before the federal government drops the mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) project in South Carolina in favor of a “dilute and dispose” approach to disposal of 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-grade plutonium, House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said Thursday.
“There are a lot of fundamental questions about dilute and dispose,” Simpson, reaffirming concerns he has aired in prior forums, said in an address to the Department of Energy’s National Cleanup Workshop Thursday in Alexandria, Va.
He cited “unknown” costs as one of those questions, including the price tag to expand the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to store processed plutonium that would otherwise be converted to commercial nuclear reactor fuel at DOE’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
The South Carolina congressional delegation, which has vehemently opposed all attempts to kill the MOX plant, will have to be dealt with, Simpson said. The New Mexico delegation would also want input on WIPP’s role, he added.
The MOX facility at DOE’s Savannah River Site is intended to be the tool by which the United States meets its commitment to a 2000 agreement with Russia under which each nation would eliminate 34 metric tons of plutonium. The Energy Department has already spent about $5 billion on the plant, but under both the Obama and Trump administrations has said it could save tens of billions of dollars and years of work by pursuing an alternative method: process the plutonium using existing facilities at the Savannah River Site, then ship the resulting material to WIPP for permanent storage underground.
As with most every aspect of this debate, the cost savings remain in contention: The Government Accountability Office reported just last week that DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration was still developing a life-cycle cost estimate for the dilute and dispose approach, and that its corresponding $56 billion life-cycle forecast for MOX had not yet been subject to “best practices.”
There are fiscal and policy implications about walking away from an infrastructure project that has been in the works for a decade, Simpson said. He noted the significant discrepancy in the figures for completion of the facility: contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services says 70 percent, DOE says 40 percent. “Somebody is wrong,” Simpson said.
There is also the question of the Russian response to switching disposal systems, Simpson said – President Vladimir Putin last year pulled his government out of the agreement, at least in part due to the U.S. move away from the agreed-upon disposal system.
The Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget request seeks $270 million to close down the MOX project and $9 million to further develop the dilute and dispose method. Senate appropriators have backed the MOX shutdown spending, while their House counterparts voted for $340 million to continue construction in the budget year starting Oct. 1. In any case, DOE will continue paying to build the plant for at least a couple months more under a continuing resolution passed last week to keep the government open through Dec. 8.
When asked during a later panel discussion at the workshop Thursday about WIPP potentially storing the diluted plutonium, DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader stressed that such receipt is not currently part of the site’s mission.
Appearing last week at the ExchangeMonitor’s RadWaste Summit in Summerlin, Nev., Shrader noted that WIPP already holds over 5 metric tons of plutonium in different forms shipped since its opening in 1998. The National Nuclear Security Administration in 2016 also authorized downblending and transport to WIPP of a separate tranche of 6 metric tons of non-pit plutonium now stored at the Savannah River Site.
However, WIPP is already likely to fill its current statutory storage capacity – 175,565 cubic meters of waste – without accepting any of the 34 metric tons of plutonium, the GAO said.
