Great News - DOE budget puts MOX fuel project on ice
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20140304/NEWS03/303040064/DOE-budget-puts-MOX-fuel-project-ice?nclick_check=1
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The U.S. Department of Energy budget for the next fiscal year places a project at the Savannah River Site to convert weapons grade plutonium to nuclear reactor fuel on cold standby, according to the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club.
The DOE budget was sent to Congress today with comments about its plans for the mixed-oxide project at SRS.
Following a year-long review of the plutonium disposition program, the budget provides funding to place the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina into cold-standby, the budget states. NNSA is evaluating alternative plutonium disposition technologies to MOX that will achieve a safe and secure solution more quickly and cost effectively. The administration remains committed to the U.S.-Russia Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, and will work with its Russian partners to achieve the goals of the agreement in a mutually beneficial manner.
Tom Clements, a nuclear adviser to the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, welcomed the news.
The MOX program is unsustainable due to run-away costs and the shut- down of the project must be carried out quickly while DOE immediately initiate options to dispose of plutonium as waste, he said. This is only a request but if it goes through MOX is dead. We have long called on DOE to abandon the mismanaged MOX project and implement viable disposition alternatives and this request finally gets DOE on the right track.
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Fuck you Lindsay Graham