10-year extension under review for MOX facility

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will consider extending a construction deadline by a decade for an already beleaguered nuclear recycling project at the Savannah River site, the agency announced Thursday.

Contractor Shaw AREVA MOX Services had asked for the extension in a May letter to the commission, saying the project is more than 60 percent complete, but several structures had yet to be finished, including an emergency generator building and fire suppression systems.

Construction for the mixed-oxide fuel project — also known as MOX — began in 2007 near Aiken and was part of a 2000 treaty agreement with Russia to convert plutonium originally intended for weapons into fuel suitable for nuclear reactors. Cost overruns into the billions of dollars have, in recent months, turned the project into a political football.

The facility was slated to be completed next year, but Shaw AREVA in its appeal to the NRC requested an extension for a variety of reasons. They attributed delays to less-than-expected-funding, shortages in qualified vendors and construction workers as well as the unique nature of the structure.

Critics charge that mounting costs have made the MOX project untenable, no customers will buy the fuel and it adds to South Carolina's nuclear waste problem.

President Barack Obama's administration placed MOX in cold standby earlier this year, a move that would have essentially killed the project. But Senate and House committees have since appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the project afloat. Voting on that funding must occur by Dec. 11 as part of the larger federal budget.