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For example, it could cost more money and take longer to get rid of just 37.5 tons of excess, weapons-grade plutonium than it did for the Manhattan Project to produce the atomic bombs that ended World War II. Four weapons — the Trinity plutonium implosion device tested in the New Mexico desert; the Little Boy uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima; the Fat Man plutonium bomb that hit Nagasaki, and an unused uranium bomb — were produced within six years in current dollars of some $24.1 billion, according to Stephen I. Schwartz’s book, “Atomic Audit.”

In comparison, it will cost more than $24.2 billion and take until 2036 for the United States to get rid of those 37.5 tons of plutonium, according to a Government Accountability Office estimate. It appears in the Senate Armed Services report on the fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill.

Costs have skyrocketed for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina. The facility is designed to blend the surplus plutonium with uranium oxide to make mixed oxide (MOX) that can be used as fuel in some U.S. commercial reactors. That would make the plutonium unusable for future nuclear weapons.

When the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) originated this MOX program in 2002, design and construction were to cost $1 billion.

By 2005, the estimate was $3.5 billion. When project construction began in 2007, it was three years behind schedule with a $4.8 billion price tag.

According to NNSA’s fiscal 2014 budget request, construction will hit $7.78 billion.

The annual cost to run the facility has also exploded. NNSA estimated in 2002 that it would cost $100.5 million a year to operate the MOX plant. Annual operating costs are now expected to be $543 million. The planned 2017 completion date has slipped another two years, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.

Here’s another ticking time bomb. A federal facilities agreement in 2002 with South Carolina called for Washington to pay up to $100 million a year to the state if the plant did not produce 1 ton of MOX fuel annually, starting in 2009. That was to compensate the state for the storage of excess plutonium.

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), a main project booster, has used amendments to delay the fines until 2016, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.

The cost prompted the Obama administration to propose slowing construction while it reviews the MOX program, including assessing other ways to get rid of the plutonium……… http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-explosive-cost-of-disposing-of-nuclear-weapons/2013/07/03/64f896e0-e287-11e2-80eb-3145e2994a55_story.html