SC delegation, Putin agree: Obama’s MOX shutdown would breach treaty | McClatchy Washington Bureau

The Obama administration’s plan to pull the plug on an unfinished, $5-billion nuclear plant has brought together some unlikely allies – the South Carolina congressional delegation and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The mixed oxide (MOX) facility in Aiken, S.C., is part of a 2000 nonproliferation agreement with Russia that calls for the two countries to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium. After years of cost overruns and chronic delays, the Obama administration effectively scrapped the S.C. project in its 2017 budget in favor of a cheaper, faster alternative called downblending.

“This is not what we agreed on,” Putin said earlier this month, according to a translation provided by the Kremlin. Putin said the decision was the reason he did not attend a major nuclear summit in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago. “Russia fulfilled its obligations in this regard and built these facilities, but our American partners did not.”

Members of the South Carolina delegation, who have often framed opposition to cutting the project’s funding in terms of the federal government breaking its promise to their state, piled on.

“We find it unfortunate that DOE’s short-sighted efforts to kill MOX have allowed President Putin – who is no friend of the United States and our foreign policy objectives – to claim the high ground about living up to international agreements,” South Carolina Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

The mixed oxide facility (MOX) at the Savannah River Site employs 2,000 people.

“Sadly, Vladimir Putin’s reaction to the President’s short-sighted plan to terminate MOX is not surprising,” Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., told McClatchy in a statement. “The United States should ... uphold its commitments to the state of South Carolina and to the international community. Impeding nuclear non-proliferation puts American families at risk.”

Now the future of the plant – and the international agreement – is headed to the marathon markup of the 2017 defense bill by the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, a meeting that will likely last well past midnight and include MOX funding.

A Senate subcommittee last week voted for the reduced level of $270 million in the federal budget, just enough to stop construction and start closing down the MOX site. Its House counterpart pushed for the original level of funding, $340 million, which would keep construction going, though at a slow pace of 4 percent a year. The facility is 70 percent completed.

“If you can convince me there’s a cheaper way to do this that meets our international commitment and overcomes the regulatory and statutory hurdles, I’m all ears,” Graham said in a statement after the Senate panel vote. “But, don’t give me an ill-conceived plan no one has thought through that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of working.”

Disposing of the plutonium in South Carolina would cost the government an estimated $800 million to $1 billion annually for several years. The downblending alternative would dilute the plutonium, package it and send it down to a federal repository in New Mexico, saving the government $400 million per year, according to a Department of Energy report.

Nuclear policy experts say plutonium is too dangerous to be focusing on the dollar amount it takes to secure it, or taking risks with a partner as volatile as Russia.

“You’re talking about 17,000 weapons; it’s expensive but how do you put a value on it if some of them fall into the hands of terrorists,” former House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told McClatchy. “How expensive would it be to have a couple of them blow up in a populated area – these millions would look like a bargain price.”

In an era of increasing tension between the United States and Russia, it’s rash to change the terms without signoff from Moscow, he said.

“This is one agreement that Russia has apparently stuck to, and now what they would like to do is blame us for walking away from this. If we don’t do it, then Russia says ‘We’re not going to do it either,’ ” McKeon said.

One of the problems is that often people making the funding decisions don’t have significant experience with nuclear issues, several nuclear policy experts told McClatchy. The expense of nuclear projects simply can’t be compared to other line items in the defense budget, they said.

“Yes it’s expensive, everything to do with nuclear is expensive, but if you told the defense department they could spend $5 billion to get rid of that much plutonium in Russia, they’d do it in a heartbeat,” said Andrew Koch, senior vice president for defense and homeland security at Scribe Strategies, a Washington-based public relations and lobbying firm.

“Plutonium is dangerous forever, and this guarantees that enormous amounts of very dangerous material gets permanently eliminated instead of storing it,” Koch said.

The current fight over the funding level in Congress may only be about $70 million, but it’s the difference between shutting it down and keeping it going, if only barely. If the MOX facility in South Carolina starts to shut down, it will be almost impossible to start it up again, Koch said.

“Some people might say it’s not a big deal, they can just restart it later,” he said. “But it’s a very specific skillset needed for these nuclear workers. That’s one of the reasons it’s so expensive, as well as all the safety and security specifications. And the minute they stop funding, you may not be able to reconstitute it.”