A report that evaluates cost projections and alternatives to the Savannah River Site MOX project will be delivered to Ernest Moniz, the Department of Energy secretary, on Aug. 17, a week later than expected.
The Red Team, a group led by Thom Mason, the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, touched down at SRS two weeks ago and conducted a high-level review of the MOX program, which primarily included the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility on site.
The Red Team was assembled by Moniz and was instructed to, among other things, analyze ways to modify the MOX fuel approach to reduce costs, examine the risk assumptions that can impact the life-cycle cost and study the scheduling and technical viability of MOX.
The MOX method includes the construction of multiple facilities at SRS and other DOE facilities that would convert 34 metric tons of plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel. The effort is part of a nonproliferation agreement with Russia.
The report was due by Aug. 10, but the date was pushed back to Aug. 17, according to Al Stotts, a public affairs official with the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA. The security group is a semi-autonomous branch of the Energy Department and is responsible for overseeing the MOX project.
"DOE will make the report available to interested parties after the appropriate reviews for public release are complete," Stotts said.
In June, Moniz said MOX is the "preferred option" for plutonium disposition, but that properly funding the program would cost more than $1 billion a year.
Earlier this month, that point was reiterated by Pete Hanlon, a high-ranking administrator in the National Nuclear Security Administration, during a nuclear meeting in Columbia.
"We are faced with budget issues with respect to this program, and that is coupled with the growing life-cycle cost of this program," Hanlon said.
The Red Team review postdates the release of a study that prices the MOX life-cycle cost at $51 billion. The congressionally-mandated study was conducted by Aerospace Corp., a California-based nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research and development center.
The study compares the MOX method to a downblending option, which would be executed using inhibitor materials, or materials that slow down the chemical process. The solution would then be packaged into canisters and shipped to a repository for permanent disposal.
Using downblending, Aerospace wrote that disposition would total $17 billion.
The MOX project is about 65 percent complete and employs 1,700 workers. The project is currently funded by a $345 million appropriation and the federal government is seeking the same funding level for next fiscal year.
