DOE Seeks to End MOX Plutonium Disposal Program
The Trump Administration requested $220 million next year “to continue the orderly and safe closure of the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility.”
The MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility was intended to eliminate excess weapons-grade plutonium by blending it with uranium oxide to produce a “mixed oxide” that is not suitable for nuclear weapons. The Administration proposes instead to pursue a “dilute and dispose” approach.
Termination of the MOX Facility in South Carolina had previously been proposed — but not approved — in budget requests for the last two years, due to mounting costs.
“Construction remains significantly over budget and behind schedule,” the Department of Energy said in a November 2017 report to Congress. “The MOX production objective was not met in 2015 or 2016 and will not be met in 2017.”
“Due to the increasing costs of constructing and operating the MOX facility, both the Department’s analysis and independent analyses of U.S. plutonium disposition strategies have consistently and repeatedly concluded that the MOX fuel strategy is more costly and requires more annual funding than the dilute and dispose approach,” the DOE report said. The report was released by DOE under the Freedom of Information Act.
Though disfavored by the Administration, the MOX program has a champion in South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham. “I will fight like crazy” to preserve it unless he is convinced that a superior alternative exists, he said at a February 8 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Detailed background on the MOX program can be found in Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Plant and Plutonium Disposition: Management and Policy Issues, Congressional Research Service, December 14, 2017.
The latest proposal to terminate the MOX program was reported in “Aiken County legislators unsurprised by Trump’s anti-MOX budget” by Colin Demarest, Aiken Standard, February 19.
In recent months, we’ve seen much of these decades’ worth of progress erased. Contracts for evaluations of government programs were canceled, FFRDCs have been forced to lay off staff, and federal advisory committees have been disbanded.
This report outlines a framework relying on “Cooperative Technical Means” for effective arms control verification based on remote sensing, avoiding on-site inspections but maintaining a level of transparency that allows for immediate detection of changes in nuclear posture or a significant build-up above agreed limits.
At a recent workshop, we explored the nature of trust in specific government functions, the risk and implications of breaking trust in those systems, and how we’d known we were getting close to specific trust breaking points.
tudents in the 21st century need strong critical thinking skills like reasoning, questioning, and problem-solving, before they can meaningfully engage with more advanced domains like digital, data, or AI literacy.