WASHINGTON – The first independent report on whether there's a cheaper, faster alternative to South Carolina's troubled weapons-grade plutonium recycling project is due in about three weeks, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Wednesday.
The Obama administration began researching other options for disposing of 34 metric tons of plutonium after the mixed-oxide fuel facility at Savannah River went over budget.
Aerospace Corp., a federally funded research and development center, is due to issue its report April 15, Moniz said during a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.
The report will include a new cost and schedule estimate for MOX and an analysis of one of the alternative disposal methods, which involves diluting the plutonium, energy officials have said.
A second report on other alternatives is due in September.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the subcommittee, dismissed the search for an alternative as futile because changing the disposal method would require a new deal with Russia, which has agreed to destroy its own 34 metric tons.
"We've studied this thing to death," Graham said. "I don't particularly want to go back and ask the Russians for any favors right now."
The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, or MOX, would turn weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power reactors. But it's more than three years behind schedule and about $3 billion over budget.
The federal government tried to stall construction of the MOX plant while alternatives were explored, but Congress intervened and forced the Energy Department to continue funding construction, but at a slower pace. The government spent $345 million in fiscal 2015 on MOX, and would do the same in fiscal 2016 under President Barack Obama's budget proposal.
Graham argued the plant is 60 percent complete and the plutonium — enough to build 17,000 warheads — needs to be destroyed for national security reasons.
"We made a promise to South Carolina and really, the world, to dispose of this material through MOX. There is no viable alternative," Graham said. "There have been some cost overruns that need to be dealt with, but I don't see an alternative that is cheaper or practical."
But nuclear industry watchdogs say MOX isn't worth saving, and there are better ways to handle the plutonium.
There's been bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill over huge energy-related construction projects that miss deadlines and exceed their budgets. Graham said he doesn't think his colleagues are losing patience with MOX just yet.
"Now is not the time to abandon a non-proliferation agreement that makes eminent sense in an increasingly dangerous world, and now is not the time to come up with some new idea that will cost more and won't work," Graham said.
