S.C. attorney general files motion for injunction to stop MOX shutdown

By Larry Taylor
Posted May 25, 2018 at 8:31 PM Updated May 26, 2018 at 5:32 PM

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (center) speaks during a news conference about the mixed oxide fuel facility at Savannah River Site at the Aiken County Government Center. Standing with him are U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (left) and South Caroilna Attorney General Alan Wilson. [Larry Taylor/The Augusta Chronicle]

AIKEN — South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson filed a motion in federal court Friday seeking an injunction to stop the U.S. Department of Energy from shutting down the mixed oxide fuel project at Savannah River Site.

Wilson said the judge has set the hearing for the preliminary injunction at 10 a.m. next Friday in Columbia.

“For years South Carolina has had a long and tortured history with the federal government breaking its promises, and we’ve filed a number of lawsuits to reflect our displeasure with this,” Wilson said at a news conference Friday at the Aiken County Government Center. “Today I filed a complaint against the United States Department of Energy. I’ve also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the MOX facility from closing in early June so that we can actually litigate this issue in federal court. We are actually going to move that the federal government be stopped from closing MOX so that we can continue on with litigating this case.”

U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott met with officials from Aiken and North Augusta, state lawmakers and the congressional delegation, and held the news conference to tout the need for the MOX facility.

“We’re one team,” Graham said. “We’re here to tell the community that we’re going to hold the Department of Energy accountable for the promises they’ve made to South Carolina. We believe the only viable alternative to get rid of the 9 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium at Savannah River Site is the MOX program, that it should not be terminated, that the idea of sending the material to New Mexico will never work. Dilute and dispose is pie in the sky. We’re all for new missions, but we’re not going to be made fools.”

Graham this week introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act which prohibits the Energy Department from terminating the MOX program. A news release on his website said the amendment was approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee and will be voted on by the Senate in coming weeks.

The MOX project arose from an agreement between the U.S. and Russia to dispose of 68 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium. The material would be enough to create about 17,000 nuclear weapons. But the project has been beset by years of delays and cost overruns, over which the state has several times sued the federal government.

With MOX discontinued, the National Nuclear Security Administration has proposed installing pits to store plutonium waste – 50 per year at SRS, and 30 per year at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

“We’re winning the day when it comes to the MOX program in Congress. We’re trying to convince the president that if you terminate MOX, you have a obligation to get this material out of South Carolina,” Graham said. “We’re not going to be a plutonium storage site, a weapons-grade plutonium dumping site. We’ll be a processing center, but we’re not going to be left with holding the bag here.

“If you don’t do MOX, you’ve got two options, dilute and dispose which won’t work because New Mexico will not accept the material when it’s diluted, their facility’s already full. The New Mexico senators say we don’t want material coming from Savannah River Site after it’s diluted. The other alternative is to store the weapons-grade plutonium. It has a half-life of 24,100 years. We think we can do MOX cheaper, but when you look at the cost to the federal government of storing this weapons-grade plutonium for 24,100 years, you can’t find a number in you computer that goes that high. So not only is MOX the most viable way to do it, it’s the cheapest way to do it, and if this program is terminated, we have one simple message: get this plutonium out of our state.”