Members of the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) said they walked away with more questions than answers Tuesday following a presentation on the downblending method of plutonium disposition. Instead of using the incomplete SRS Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) to convert 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium to nuclear fuel, the Obama administration has called for diluting the material at SRS and shipping the material to a federal repository, most likely the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
Originally expected to cost $17 billion, the life-cycle cost of the MOX project is expected to be upward of $50 billion, according to DOE cost projections released last year. Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, and physicist Frank von Hippel, a nuclear arms and nonproliferation expert at Princeton University, concluded in their presentation that the MOX project became unaffordable because of poor oversight by the Department of Energy, the lack of nuclear-qualified construction workers at the MFFF, and several other factors. But CAB member Gil Allensworth said the MOX method has been the chosen pathway for years and was chosen in lieu of downblending. “We’re putting MOX away after it’s 70 percent complete and that just doesn’t seem to make sense,” he said. “The presentation didn’t seem to address that very well.”
DOE has disputed the 70 percent figure from plant contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services, arguing instead that the construction cost moving forward cancels out progress of the facility and reduces the completion percentage to about 40 percent.
The presenters support the federal government’s support of downblending, stating in their presentation that this method is the “least risky and cheapest option,” with an estimated $17 billion life-cycle cost. But when asked about the viability of downblending, the scientists had few answers and could not quality their support for DOE’s position with facts, said CAB member John McMichael. “You have to qualify those comments other than by agreeing that MOX is too much,” he said.
Lyman and von Hippel did concede that using the WIPP facility will require several adjustments. The transuranic waste storage site has been shut down since February 2014 due to two separate incidents — a salt haul truck fire on Feb. 5 and the release of a small amount of radiation on Feb. 14. The Department of Energy is pushing to reopen WIPP in December of this year. “DOE will have to resolve WIPP safety issues and obtain New Mexico consent. WIPP security may have to be increased,” the two wrote in their presentation.
