Report pressures Congress to kill plan for plutonium
A team of experts has confirmed what the Energy Department has been saying for two years — that burying 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium would be far cheaper and more practical than completing a multibillion-dollar plant that would turn the radioactive material into commercial reactor fuel.
The report raises pressure on Congress to walk away from a costly project that has been plagued by rapidly escalating costs and an absence of any customers for the fuel it is supposed to produce. The report also has broad implications for New Mexico. Under proposed alternatives, the authors suggest treating the waste at a now-closed facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory and then storing it at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.
The Department of Energy tried to kill the project in 2013, but Congress has kept it on budgetary life support, with the strong support of South Carolina’s congressional delegation. The study says essentially that sooner or later, the Energy Department will be forced to abandon the fuel plant, and the sooner it does so the better.
“The downward performance spiral {expected for the plant} is accompanied by an upward cost escalation spiral that would eventually make {the Department of Energy’s} path-forward decision for them,” the report concluded, “but only after a great deal of money has been wasted.”
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