Skip to main content

Sen. Graham: MOX Plant Construction at SRS Will Begin Before End of 2006

From today's Augusta Chronicle:
If U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has his way, construction of a mixed-oxide, or MOX, plant at Savannah River Site will begin before the end of the year.

''History will judge us poorly if we let this moment pass,'' Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told the attendees at the luncheon.

"The need for MOX is greater today than the day we awarded the project," said the South Carolina Republican, who spoke Wednesday at the Greater Aiken Chamber of Commerce meeting.

The MOX project would convert at least 34 metric tons of plutonium into reactor fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

Congress is divided over funding for the project. The Senate voted to spend $419 million in the next fiscal year on the facility, but the House did not allocate any funding for the project.

As part of the MOX proposal in 2000, Russia also would build a facility to dispose of 34 metric tons of nuclear waste.

However, progress in Russia also stalled, and that country recently decided to develop alternate technology.

Nevertheless, Mr. Graham said a successful collaboration with Russia would be historic.

"History will judge us poorly if we let this moment pass," he said.
For our previous posts on the MOX program, click here.

Technorati tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
This is a bad idea, because all MOX fuel plants I know of use aqueous reprocessing regimes which do little but increase the volume of waste and are never cost effective. Aqueous regimes must be dynamically cooled, have massive infrastructure, and are quite prone to exposure scandals. We should either use molten salt regimes or just send the spent fuel to dry storage casks, because MOX the old fasioned way does little but bolster anti-nuclear arguments.

Popular posts from this blog

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...