Graham puts foot down on DOE review of South Carolina MOX fuel plant

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is blocking the confirmation of Ernest Moniz as secretary of Energy until the lawmaker receives assurances that the Department of Energy will finish building a plutonium fuel fabrication plant at DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS). Graham told a Senate hearing that he had nothing against Moniz, but is using the ‘hold’ he has placed on Moniz’s confirmation vote to pressure the administration to back off its proposal to slow down construction of the half-finished mixed-oxide fuel fabrication facility (MOFFF). Citing major cost overruns, President Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget request calls for an assessment of other routes to disposing of surplus weapons plutonium, and it proposed funding the MOFFF at $380 million, compared with an estimated $553 million in the current year. Under a 2010 agreement, the US and Russia are each obligated to blend down 34 metric tons of plutonium into mixed oxide fuel for use in nuclear power reactors.

At a 24 April hearing, Neile Miller, the acting administrator of DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the cost estimated by the plant’s contractor, Shaw AREVA MOX Services, has doubled to $8 billion in the last year. Graham, however, contended that the overruns weren’t that steep. ‘We can pretty much assure you that we can get this thing down to $6.2 billion,’ he told Miller, noting that he had been in touch with the contractor and the White House. DOE budget documents state that the MOFFF total project cost was revised upward in 2012 from $4.8 billion to $7.7 billion, and its completion delayed by three years, to 2019. Graham said an environmental impact statement had concluded that the alternative, vitrification—mixing the plutonium with high-level nuclear waste and glass—would require building a new vitrification plant at SRS and shipping liquid wastes from DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington State.

‘I will not entertain for one minute a disposition plan other than MOX,’ Graham told Anne Harrington, deputy NNSA administrator, at a 23 April Armed Services Committee hearing. ‘We’re halfway through; there is no other way to do it.’

The budget documents said a major reason for the overrun was the fact that the original cost estimate was set before completion of the MOFFF design. For example, the original estimate required 735 miles of electrical cables, but the finished design called for 1395 miles. Other factors include increased scarcity of nuclear expertise, high turnover of qualified engineers and technical staff, and more onerous Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing requirements than had been anticipated.