South Carolina could sue the Department of Energy today over plans to terminate the Savannah River Site’s MOX project, state Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a letter Tuesday to DOE Secretary Rick Perry.
The Energy Department earlier this month formalized plans to convert the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) for production of plutonium nuclear-warhead cores, or pits. That would shut the door on the plant’s original mission to convert 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel under a 2010 U.S.-Russian arms control accord.
Such a move “fails to honor commitments made to the state” and would turn South Carolina into a plutonium dumping ground, Wilson wrote.
“DOE has indicated its intention to formally issue a stop work order on the MOX project on or about June 11, leaving the State no choice but to seek legal redress immediately,” he told Perry.
The lawsuit was still anticipated on Friday, but had not been filed at deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
The attorney general would file an Administrative Procedures Act claim in U.S. District Court, Wilson spokesman Robert Kittles said by email Tuesday. Such claims are typically filed by entities impacted by a federal agency’s actions. Kittles could not provide any other details about the suit or what redress the state will seek.
Perry on May 10 formally declared DOE would abandon the MOX project, as it has sought for several years. Converting the plant is expected to cost $4.6 billion, and the reconfigured facility would produce 50 pits each year through 2030.
The state and DOE inked a deal in 2003 that paved the way for construction of the MFFF starting in 2007. Under the agreement, the federal agency was supposed to process, or remove, 1 ton of plutonium from the state before Jan. 31, 2016, or pay $1 million a day, capped at $100 million annually. None of that has happened.
With the MFFF over budget and behind schedule, DOE has sought to pull the plug in favor of an alternative “dilute and dispose” approach for getting rid of the plutonium.
Wilson has sued the federal government four times since 2014 to keep the MOX program going and claim funds owed after DOE busted the 2016 plutonium-removal deadline. One lawsuit has been dropped, while the other cases remain alive in U.S. District Court in South Carolina and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
“DOE’s latest proposal includes sending an additional 26 plus metric tons of plutonium to South Carolina, but DOE does not have a viable, feasible, or credible disposition pathway,” Wilson wrote. “Among other reasons, this means the issuance of the May 10 certification is illegal, violates governing statutory law, and is arbitrary and capricious and unsupportable by the facts.”
