CB&I Areva MOX Services LLC, a consortium including France's
state-owned Orano, formerly called Areva, has been building the
Mixed Oxide (MOX) project at the Savannah River Site in South
Carolina since 2007.
But the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration told it in
a letter dated Oct. 10 that the project was over. "This notice
terminates the contract in its entirety, and is effective
immediately," said the letter, a copy of which was seen by
Reuters.
The move came a day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Fourth Circuit halted a lower court's injunction of the
Department of Energy's (DOE) plan to shut the plant.
MOX Services did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
South Carolina politicians, including Republican Senator Lindsey
Graham, have defended the MOX plant, saying it was about 70
percent complete, would help keep plutonium out of the hands of
militants, and provide up to 600 direct jobs.
The DOE told Senate and House of Representatives committees in
May that MOX, a type of specialized nuclear recycling plant that
has never been built in the United States, would cost about $48
billion more than the $7.6 billion already spent on it.
Instead of completing MOX, the Trump administration, like the
Obama administration before it, wants to blend the 34 tonnes of
deadly plutonium - enough to make about 8,000 nuclear weapons -
with an inert substance and bury it underground in New Mexico's
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
Burying the plutonium would cost nearly $20 billion over the
next two decades and would require 400 jobs at Savannah River,
the DOE has estimated.
The DOE has said the Savannah River site could be used to
manufacture new plutonium pits, or triggers, for nuclear
weapons. But there have not been final decisions on that plan,
and South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster has complained it
would not provide jobs for many years.
MOX opponents praised the closure. "Taxpayers can now rest
easier that their money will no longer be thrown down a black
hole called MOX," said Tom Clements of the Savannah River Site
Watch.
An NNSA spokeswoman said the agency will work with MOX Services
to reduce "short-term impacts" on workers at the site resulting
from the project's termination.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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