Kenneth Fletcher
NS&D Monitor
3/14/2014
As South Carolina considers potential legal action to fight the planned suspension of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, officials are pushing the Obama Administration on how it plans to fulfill its surplus plutonium disposition commitment. Due to cost increases, last week the National Nuclear Security Administration announced that it plans to put MOX into “cold standby” and spend at least another year examining its options to dispose of the plutonium. But alternatives have already been extensively studied and would likely come in at around the same cost, former NNSA official Will Tobey told NS&D Monitor this week. “I’m baffled by it,” said Tobey, now of Harvard’s Belfer Center. “Frankly, I think it was pretty clear from last year’s budget for MOX that they were inclined to do this, but they went ahead and spent hundreds of millions of dollars and are still recommending $200 million-plus for next year for shutdown activities. That just seems like throwing good money after bad.”
Rep. Wilson Presses Kerry on MOX
The MOX plant under construction in South Carolina has been part of the Administration’s plans to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium under a 2000 agreement with Russia. Last week, Russia announced that it is making progress on its side of the agreement, sending an initial batch of 56 fuel assemblies of MOX fuel to its BN-800 fast breeder reactor that is preparing for startup, according to the Russian Research Institute of Atomic Reactors. This week, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) pressed Secretary of State John Kerry on how the Administration plans to renegotiate the agreement. “The disastrous decision by the President and his budget to halt progress on the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Facility at the Savannah River Site will allow the Russians the option to stop the disposition of 34 metric tons of excess weapons grade plutonium,” Wilson said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
Wilson asked: “When will we be able to have these negotiations? If we back down on our end of the agreement, what assurances do we have that Russia’s excess material won’t end up in the wrong hands?” Kerry replied that he could not provide an answer immediately. “I honestly need to get deeper briefed on exactly what that decision was, how it was made, and why. Let me find out and we’ll get back to you,” Kerry said. The NNSA did not respond to an interview request this week on its plans for MOX.
Governor: ‘We Are Fighters in South Carolina’
The law also requires the Department of Energy to either begin processing surplus plutonium at MOX or remove some of the material from the state by 2016. If DOE does not meet those commitments it would face fines of up to $100 million per year. The state Attorney General’s Office is “examining all possible avenues for legal action,” spokesman Mark Powell said this week. Governor Nikki Haley ® also vowed to fight the shutdown. “When you suddenly say, ‘Oops we started this, and, by the way, we don’t have the money to continue it,’ yes, I’m going to get my back up. We are fighters in South Carolina. We fight for what’s right. So we’re working with the attorney general on what that fight can look like,” Haley said this week, according to The State newspaper.
Late last week, members of South Carolina’s Congressional Delegation urged South Carolina Haley to consider legal action. Plans to suspend the MOX program “will likely lead the federal government to violate the terms of the U.S.-Russia Plutonium Disposition Management Agreement and will almost certainly lead to a failure” in DOE’s commitments to address the plutonium by 2016, according to the March 7 letter from Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott and Rep. Wilson. “We ask that you work with the South Carolina Attorney General to explore any legal avenues the state may have to address this injustice.”
But longtime opponents of the project have said the Administration’s decision has been welcome news. “MOX, aside from the huge cost, there has always been this worry that some of us have had that this was a way to building block toward a closed fuel cycle in the U.S.,” Frank Von Hippel of Princeton University told NS&D Monitor. He believes the project is considered by some to be a pathway to developing a reprocessing plant in South Carolina, which is opposed by many nonproliferation advocates.
What Disposal Alternative Will Be Pursued
But the question remains as to which disposition alternative will be pursued, something the NNSA has said will take at least another year to determine. The Administration completed a study last year on options, and one alternative that has emerged is processing the plutonium at the Savannah River Site for direct disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant—a small portion has already taken that route in a pilot program. The material could also be vitrified in high-level waste or immobilized in another material and disposed of in a repository or borehole. While Von Hippel said that those options will likely face political problems, he added: “There is no doubt that some at least would be less costly, I would say all, but with DOE you never know. You can make anything costly.”
All of the alternatives being considered could be prone to the same cost increases and other issues that have hit MOX, Tobey said. “The technological and financial risks associated with at least the other disposition path are probably substantial. So I would be afraid that in 10 years we’ll find ourselves in the same position we are now, facing large cost overruns, but we won’t have made any progress at solving the problem,” Tobey said.
Recent Events at WIPP Complicate That Option
Recent events at WIPP have been another complication to the option of disposing of the plutonium there. Last month, the first two major incidents at the facility took place—a fire and a radiation release—and at this point the repository is closed indefinitely while recovery plans are in the works. “The timing on all this is really not working out very well. WIPP appeared like a better alternative until they managed to suffer their first accident there, which truly was trivial in terms of the quantities of radiation, but nonetheless the public perception and the public acceptance and political consequences could be large nonetheless,” Alan Hanson of MIT, a former AREVA official, told NS&D Monitor. “Then to they have the Russians finish off the first MOX fuel at the same time that we are canceling our program and then watching Putin start annexing the Crimea, it’s all kinds of strange things happening at the same time. … In light of the fact that the U.S. is essentially going back on its commitment to the Russians, I’m surprised Putin hasn’t said let’s pull the plug on the agreement since you’re violating it.”
None of the options being considered comply with the latest version of the Russian agreement, which specifies disposal in MOX fuel. A paper published in January by Moscow’s Center for Arms Control Studies states that “a deviation from one of the basic provisions of the Agreement would hardly find a positive response from Russian experts who always asserted that a real weapon grade plutonium disposition is possible only through its irradiation in MOX fuel of civil nuclear reactors.”
Russia may agree with a U.S. disposal alternative, but in turn the U.S. would likely need to agree to lifting restrictions on Russia’s breeder reactor program designed to prevent the production of additional weapons-grade plutonium , states the paper by former nuclear counselor for the Russian Embassy Vladimir Rybachenkov and Anatoli Diakov of the Center for Arms Control Studies.“Taking this into account we are of the view that Russia may agree with any disposition method, which the USA would deem acceptable. In return the Russian side would have the right to repudiate the provision of the Agreement prohibiting spent fuel and blanket reprocessing till the full disposition of 34 tons of excess plutonium is over.”
‘It’s Going to Be Enormously Expensive to Dispose Of’
While Tobey said this week that he doesn’t have a “philosophical commitment to MOX,” he said that cutting funding for the project was not the best way to complete the mission economically. “Consider that all options entail risk, both financial and technological, and I think a principle of good construction project management is that to the extent possible avoid funding cuts because they inevitably increase the total cost,” Tobey said. “This material was enormously expensive to make, but it was necessary for our national security. It is going to be enormously expensive to dispose of, but it is equally necessary for our national security and frankly I view it as a generational responsibility.”
