Plutonium processingS.C. sues DOE over Savanah River MOX facility

South Carolina decided to go to court to prevent the Obama administration from cutting off funding for a troubled multi-billion dollar Savanah River plant in which weapons-grade plutonium would be processed and turned into suitable fuel for commercial nuclear reactors (“Energy Department suspends work on controversial plutonium reprocessing project,” HSNW 5 March 2014).

The state said closing the plant would hurt an international nonproliferation agreement and eliminate hundreds of jobs.

“They [the Obama administration] made a promise,” Governor Nikki Haley (R) said at a news conference at the Statehouse. “They cannot, for whatever reason this is, decide that they are going to go on cold standby.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in South Carolina by state Attorney General Alan Wilson, accuses the federal government of using money which Congress allocated for building the mixed-oxide fuel project, known as MOX, to shut it down.

“The use of appropriated funds in this manner is unauthorized and violates the Constitutional and Federal law,” the state said in the lawsuit, which names the Energy Department, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and the National Nuclear Security Administration as defendants. “Any actions of the Defendants to suspend construction of the MOX Facility in Fiscal Year 2014 should be declared unlawful.”

The MOX project at the Savannah River Site was initiated to help the United States do its part of the agreement with Russia for the two countries to dispose of at least thirty-four metric tons each of weapons-grade plutonium, an amount of material sufficient for about 17,000 nuclear warheads.

The plant, if it is ever completed, would be the first of its kind in the United States, but repeated delay and huge cost overruns have convinced the administration that other methods to process the plutonium should be explored.

The initial budget for the MOX project, when it was launched a decade ago, was just under $4 billion. Since then, construction costs have reached $8 billion, and DOE officials now say the plant will cost about $30 billion over the years it is in use.

State politicians began to talk about suing the federal government earlier this month, when U.S. Representative Joe Wilson — father of the state attorney general — and U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott wrote to Haley, urging the governor to “explore any legal avenues” to keep MOX going (see “S.C. politicians want decision to halt work on Savannah River plutonium plant reversed,” HSNW, 14 March 2014).

On Tuesday, Rep. Wilson, whose district includes the Savannah River Site, said that the lawsuit was about both the 1,800 construction jobs which would be lost if the project was cancelled and the international agreement with Russia.

“They’re really inseparable,” Wilson said, of the two issues. “This is not a great time for us to be renegotiating with the Russian government.”

Haley said the MOX lawsuit was being filed to hold the administration accountable to promises made to South Carolinians.

“They have messed with the wrong state,” Haley said, of the administration’s decision not to finish the MOX project. “We are going to protect the people of the Savannah River Site. … Enough is enough.”

Tom Clements, an adviser to the Sierra Club in South Carolina and a MOX opponent, told the Times that “Any lawsuit being filed by the State of South Carolina is being done for political reasons and will simply be a waste of tax payer money. The State of South Carolina should stop the political theatrics and work with DOE and public interest groups to pursue the cheapest, quickest way to dispose of plutonium as nuclear waste.”