The Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal sustains its predecessor’s plan to terminate the Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina.
The National Nuclear Security Administration’s $13.9 billion budget proposal includes $1.8 billion for the defense nuclear nonproliferation account, of which $279 million would go toward nonproliferation construction – a combination of MOX termination operations and research into the alternative dilute and dispose option.
Specifically, it would direct $270 million toward termination of the facility and the other $9 million to pursue the alternative. According to the NNSA’s budget justification, MOX “would require approximately $800 million to $1 billion annually for decades. It would be irresponsible to pursue this approach when a more cost-effective alternative exists.”
The MOX facility is being built to meet the U.S. obligation under a nonproliferation agreement with Russia that requires each side to eliminate 34 metric tons of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. The Energy Department has estimated the facility’s life-cycle cost at about $50 billion, while project contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services says it would be $19 billion.
The Obama administration proposed instead to dilute the plutonium at existing Savannah River Site facilities and store the processed material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Congress, though, resisted efforts to defund MOX construction.
Asked whether the decision on MOX is based on the carryover in NNSA leadership from the Obama administration, agency Administrator Frank Klotz said Tuesday that Trump’s senior leadership approached the issue “with a fresh set of eyes and came to the conclusion which they came to.”
The Trump administration’s proposal to terminate the project, according to the budget justification, would save $61 million and “avoid up to an additional $5 billion to $9 billion in construction costs and billions more in operating costs while disposing of the surplus plutonium more quickly.”
Under the omnibus appropriations bill currently funding the government through the end of this fiscal year, the defense nuclear nonproliferation account receives $1.9 billion, including $335 million for MOX construction and up to $15 million for conceptual design activities for the dilute and dispose alternative.
