nuclear-news

Savannah River Nuclear Site the $billion “plutonium elimination” project

Energy Department Nuclear Nonproliferation Program Plagued By Problems  HUFFINGTON POST Center For Public Integrity  |  By Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey Smith, 25 June 13  “….The government’s current estimate is that the plant will not begin operation before 2019, seven years late. Estimates of its operating costs over a 15 to 20 year period range from $8 billion to $12 billion, meaning that it could cost around $20 billion in total to create fuel rods from all 34 tons of the plutonium that Washington has promised to eliminate.

But even if the government finds buyers for the fuel – which seems doubtful – it will not recoup more than $2 billion of its expenses, according to the Congressional Research Service. At the current pricetag, eliminating each pound of plutonium at the U.S. plant may cost roughly $243,000, according to Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard.

So far, around $3.7 billion has been spent on the fuel factory, which could wind up an abandoned concrete shell in the middle of a pine forest. Another $700 million was used to design a related plutonium dismantlement facility that NNSA never built.

Those expenditures have helped make it the single most expensive U.S. nonproliferation project now under way, according to independent experts…..

New budget troubles arise

Austerity pressures in Washington have created new obstacles for the companies and their lobbyists, however. The Obama administration, after convening four high-level meetings about the MOX plant this spring, urged a 50 percent cut in its planned spending in fiscal year 2014, to just $320 million.

“Cost growth and fiscal pressure may make the project unaffordable,” the Energy Department said in its formal budget proposal to Congress. A spokesman for the department declined comment about the review now under way……..” .http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/energy-department-nuclear-nonproliferation_n_3498626.html

June 26, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, USA