Part 1 of 2 Parts
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the U.S. effort to choose one of two locations for the production of the plutonium cores for nuclear warheads. The cores are commonly referred to as “pits.” The two possible sites were the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico and Savannah River site in South Carolina. However, there is unfinished business at Savannah River that must also be dealt with.
In the year 2000, the U.S. and Russia signed a deal to dispose of tons of weapons grade plutonium left over from the Cold War. The idea was that the plutonium could be diluted and mixed with uranium to create MOX fuel for domestic nuclear reactors.
The Russians built their MOX plant and produced small amounts of MOX fuel in 2014. They reached industrial capacity at their facility in 2015.
The U.S. decided to build a MOX plant at Savannah River to carry out their obligation under the deal with Russia. Since construction began, there have been lawsuits, delays and cost overruns. Critics say that the problems are a clear illustration of waste and mismanagement at the DoE National Nuclear Security Administration. (NNSA) In 2016, the Russians pulled out of the nuclear fuel agreement saying that the U.S. had failed to comply with the terms of the agreement.
Now it is estimated that completion of the U.S. MOX facility will cost seventeen billion dollars. The contractor for the MOX plant is a joint venture between the French nuclear company Areva and Chicago Iron & Steel. The contractor has repeatedly fallen short of meeting their goals on time and in budget. There has been a rising movement in the U.S. government to kill the project altogether.
If the project is shut down, the estimates submitted to Congress by the NNSA state that the U.S. government will have sunk around seven billion six hundred million dollars in the project. If work continues and the facility is completed and produces the planned amount of MOX fuel, the cost to the U.S. will be an additional fifty billion dollars over the lifetime of the plant. If, instead of completing the project, it is cancelled, the U.S. government believes that they can dilute and dispose of the plutonium for about eighteen billion dollars over thirty years.
The director of the Savannah River Site Watch says that “The decision to abandon the MOX project is the only reasonable decision as the MOX project isn’t viable technically or financially. What a monumental waste this has been.”
Energy Secretary Rick Perry has released a document this week that authorizes the end of construction of the U.S. MOX plant. In addition, the document promises to remove thirty-four metric tons of plutonium that was going to be converted to MOX fuel from the state of South Carolina. The new plan calls for the dilution of the plutonium with nonradioactive materials and disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico which was opened to dispose of nuclear waste from the production of nuclear weapons.
The NNSA released a document that said, “Several independent assessments have found the alternative dilute and dispose method to be a faster, less expensive, and less risky alternative to MOX. The Department of Energy is committed to meetings its obligation to the state of South Carolina to securely process and remove plutonium from the state.”
Please read Part 2