In another sign the final end of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) might be near, South Carolina is trying to negotiate a settlement with the Department of Energy over $100 million the state says it is owed because the unfinished, now-terminated plant never processed plutonium.
That is according to an order filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims by Judge Margaret Sweeney, who said she was advised South Carolina and the Department of Energy were starting settlement negotiations. Sweeney’s order stays consideration of motions for summary judgment by the parties that will, if the groups settle the case, be rendered null and void.
The Department of Energy and South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson did not reply to requests for comment.
Federal law required DOE to by Jan. 1, 2016, process 1 metric ton of surplus weapon-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel using the MFFF at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, or to remove that amount of material from the state. Failure to do so opened the federal government to a daily fine of $1 million, to a maximum of $100 million per year. When DOE missed the deadline, South Carolina began suing.
South Carolina filed the case now headed to settlement with the Court of Federal Claims on Jan. 8, 2018, seeking compensation for DOE’s failure to remove plutonium from the state in 2017. In 2017, the state filed essentially the same claim for DOE’s failure to convert any plutonium in 2016. South Carolina eventually consented to the court dismissing the 2017 suit — but without prejudice, so it could be refiled — as the state pursued still other MFFF-related lawsuits.
On Oct. 10, DOE canceled MOX Services’ prime contract to build the MFFF. That was only one day after after the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a lower court’s injunction — handed down in a separate MFFF lawsuit between the same parties — against shuttering the facility.
The state and DOE signaled they would try to settle less than a week after a prominent delegation of South Carolina politicians — Gov. Henry McMaster (R), state Attorney General Alan Wilson (R), Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) — visited President Donald Trump at the White House to beg for a reprieve for MFFF.
The MFFF was designed to fulfill the terms of a 2000 arms control agreement that required both the United States and Russia to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium. The Donald Trump administration, like the Barack Obama administration before it, now wants to dispose of the plutonium by blending it with concrete-like grout at planned Savannah River Site facilities,and burying the resulting mixture deep underground at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
