South Carolina delegates in D.C. are mounting pressure against the president to breathe renewed life into a multibillion-dollar program
to reprocess nuclear weapons waste at the Savannah River Site.
A bipartisan host of South Carolina congressmen wrote a letter to President Barack Obama on Tuesday protesting a decision to place the “mixed oxide” fuel (MOX) project on “cold standby.”
The letters come as a hearing is scheduled today on Capitol Hill in which the House appropriations subcommittee on energy and water will elicit testimony from U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
In a budget request to Congress, the DOE states that the project isn’t economically viable and will balloon to $30 billion over its life cycle.
The department suggested that the government study alternative means to reprocess Cold War-era weapons plutonium into commercial reactor fuel.
Environmentalists have argued that the reprocessing program has no customers and still creates hazardous nuclear byproducts.
In the letter Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of the Midlands wrote that the U.S. is threatening nonproliferation treaties with Russia and might have to renegotiate the Land Withdrawal Act.
The act was adopted to allow the energy department to open a disposal site in New Mexico that has been shuttered after a radioactive leak in February.
If the waste isn’t moved from SRS by the end of next year, taxpayers will be on the hook for a $1 million-a-day penalty, Wilson wrote.
Doing nothing or studying other alternatives will cost taxpayers $100 million annually, Wilson wrote.
“Material will never move out of SRS, and the U.S. will have a serious blow dealt to its international credibility on the nonproliferation front,” he wrote. “It will leave material stranded and derail environmental cleanup missions in South Carolina for years to come.”
Wilson was joined in his letter by the entire South Carolina delegation, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, and 14 others from other states.
Last week, Republican U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina wrote a letter to the president urging reconsideration of placing MOX in cold standby.