Energy Department appeals MOX order

By James Folker

Posted June 18, 2018

The Department of Energy is appealing the order forbidding it from stopping construction on the mixed oxide fuel facility at Savannah River Site.

It is also asking the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to set aside that order while its appeal is heard.

One of South Carolina’s main arguments in seeking to block the Energy Department from terminating MOX was that, without it, the state would become a dumping ground for the weapons-grade material. In its appeal, the department says any harm “would occur at the earliest by 2046. ... Such harm, to potentially occur in 30 years at the earliest, cannot be considered an imminent injury under Article III, particularly when the State’s preferred alternative – the construction of the MOX facility – is not estimated to be complete until 2048.”

The appeal contends that the South Carolina attorney general’s office, which sought the injunction, didn’t show any evidence that the Energy Department intends to keep plutonium at SRS longer than “the 50-year period that the State concedes has been studied under a previous environmental impact statement, or that DOE has made an irreversible or irretrievable commitment of resources to use the dilute and dispose methodology to remove the defense plutonium designated for MOX from South Carolina,” according to the filing.

The Energy Department also argues that continuing MOX construction will interfere with its plans to make plutonium pits at SRS and at Los Alamos, N.M.

″(DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration) cannot prepare to repurpose the MOX facility construction site for the facility to produce plutonium pits – a need that both the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense have identified as urgent and crucial to national security, and for which the MOX site has been identified as the best candidate,” according to the motion for a stay. “Any delay in moving forward with this program could jeopardize DOE’s ability to meet the requirement that NNSA be able to produce no fewer than 80 war reserve pits per year by the year 2030.”

The state attorney general’s office said Monday that it was “confident the well-reasoned order from the District Court requiring DOE to simply comply with the law will be affirmed and upheld.”

It was not clear Monday when the case might be heard.