But the first step is to fabricate the mixed oxide fuel. That will be the job of a facility the government is building at its Savannah River site in South Carolina. Construction on the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility began in 2006 and is about 60 percent complete – and will be completed if the government doesn’t pull the plug on it (this is on page 77).
Following a year-long review of the plutonium disposition program, the Budget provides funding to place the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina into cold-standby. NNSA is evaluating alternative plutonium disposition technologies to MOX that will achieve a safe and secure solution more quickly and cost effectively.
Sounds like Yucca Mountain all over again, doesn’t it? The Department of Energy has a reputation for abandoning large projects, but even leaving that aside, there’s very little justification for stopping the project.
NEI President and CEO Marv Fertel makes the case in a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz:
Construction of the MOX facility is 60 percent complete, employs 1,800 people directly and utilizes more than 4,000 American contractors and suppliers in 43 states. These contracts contribute millions of dollars in revenue to those states, as the enclosure shows in state-level detail. This project has achieved nearly 18 million safe work hours – an unprecedented achievement for any construction project of this kind. The MOX project has also supported the development of advanced U.S. technology for both national security and commercial purposes.
If this were a horrible project with a destructive agenda, it wouldn’t matter at all how many people are engaged in it. Shut it down by all means. The MOX facility does not qualify as a horrible project. Not only will it produce commercial fuel, it will also quell proliferation concerns regarding the plutonium.
NEI views the MOX project as an investment in the nation’s future. The facility, once operational, will operate for more than a decade to complete its original mission to transform 34 metric tons of U.S. weapons-grade plutonium into civilian nuclear fuel. During that time, additional missions for the facility will likely be found and may include the transformation of additional U.S. weapons-grade plutonium, a worthy nonproliferation and disarmament goal.
The MOX facility is not a boondoggle. It can be finished and will serve an unalloyed good. Now, killing a project in the President’s budget request does not mean it’s dead – Congress will weigh in during the appropriations process and could reject the idea wholly or in part. But one shouldn’t count on that, as NEI wisely hasn’t. It’s an important issue and worthy of a fuss – a good topic to write about to your Congressman, in fact, who probably isn’t flooded with comments about it.
Comments
Marcel
Any other than TVA?
"I am almost 100% sure that several US plants (certainly Catawba) have used some MOX fuel assemblies manufactured in France as part of a proof of concept for the MOX facility in South Carolina."
Not "several," just Catawba, and the irradiation was ended early when they experienced unexpected growth in the test assemblies.
https://www.facebook.com/AikenForNuclear
Specifically, as noted by others previously, if the option of using MOX in LWRs is scrapped, along with the SRS plant, then one is left with the alternative of converting the WGPu to “spent fuel standard” by mixing it with LWR spent fuel waste – which implies building an LWR spent fuel processing plant.
If the DoE’s Moniz doesn’t already know that, how long will it take him to find out ? ….and then what ?
On the technical side, there seems to be very little information available about the design of the SRS plant.
A recent article included this interesting statement:
“The MOX facility is designed to remove impurities from plutonium feedstock obtained from nuclear weapon pits … to include about 300 separate process systems using approximately 23,000 instruments and 85 miles of process piping.”
http://www.powermag.com/s-c-does-hold-of-mox-facility-construction-is-illegal/
….which provides a little hint of why the plant is so costly.
Presumably those “impurities” are primarily gallium added to stabilize the metal in weapons.
But 300 process systems ?! …that sounds crazy. Someone’s idea of a joke ?
Is there any more detailed info available somewhere ? Thnx
TVA has signed an expression of interest. Duke irradiated a few test assemblies at Catawba but stopped the test early due to issues with fuel rod growth and they don't want to burn it. Who's stepping to the plate, after nearly two decades of pursuing the MOX option?
This idea was rejected AFAIK because the plutonium remains as weapons grade, rather than the "LWR Spent Fuel Standard" agreed to, which turns weapons grade to reactor grade.
Rather, as NAS defined it in a report in 2000, "the spent fuel standard holds that the final plutonium form produced by a disposition option should be approximately as resistant to acquisition, processing, and use in nuclear weapons as is the plutonium in typical spent fuel from once-through operation in a commercial light-water reactor."
NAS said that can be accomplished in a variety of ways, not necessarily involving isotopic transformation.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9999&page=3
As noted in the reference cited in a previous comment,
“It is evident that the eventual repudiation by the American side of the previously agreed upon method of plutonium disposition will have an influence on the implementation of the PMDA Agreement … Immobilization does not guarantee full irreversibility since mixing plutonium with radioactive waste does not change its isotopic composition and does not exclude in principle the possibility of plutonium extraction from the mixture … A deviation from one of the basic provisions of the Agreement would hardly find a positive response from Russian experts who always asserted that a real weapon grade plutonium disposition is possible only through its irradiation in MOX fuel of civilian nuclear reactors thus assuring an irreversible withdrawal from weapon’s program.”
http://us.areva.com/home/liblocal/docs/Nuclear/MOXproject/RussiaCACEES.pdf
However, I am NOT interested in arguing about this: As I said in my first comment, what I want to know is how the heck did the SRS MOX plant get so expensive, with “300 process systems” ?
Is this the result of some ridiculous DoE/NRC requirements ?
http://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Moniz-Expands-on-Halting-MOX-Plant-at-House-Hearin
Let me add, too, that MOX fuel is plausible because most reactors can use it. If the MOX facility is completed and if the fuel is commercially competitive (big ifs, I admit), then facilities will respond to that. But if the MOX facility looks dubious, plants will not contemplate the cost of the adaptation to use it. It has a certain chicken and egg quality to it, but it's also early days. MOX has proved plausible in Europe and there's no reason to believe that can't be true here. Moving forward is a good direction for a number of reasons - let's not forget its non-proliferation aspect - and it'd be a disappointment not to finish it.
Quote:
“In the case of the MOX facility, he said that NRC concerns caused major changes in the facility’s design. The original design was based on AREVA’s MOX facility in La Hague, France.”
OK, so this was another one of NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko’s insanities. Great. Congrats to Democratic leader Harry Reid.