• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Podcast
  • Archives

Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Breeder Reactors

How Did the MOX Project Get So Expensive?

May 17, 2016 By Rod Adams 23 Comments

Over the past week or so, I’ve engaged in a “root cause analysis” project to determine why the US is having so much difficulty implementing a plan to take 34 metric tons of nearly pure plutonium 239 — a fissile isotope with virtually the same energy value as uranium 235 — out of our nuclear weapons program and beneficially use it as a source of fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

It’s a fascinating tale with several branches, but here is the spoiler up front. The root cause seems to be encapsulated in the following quote from a recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists titled Can the US-Russia plutonium disposition agreement be saved?

Many experts were skeptical about the MOX option, not least because it would provide a significant boost to the plutonium economy, eventually leading to wider acceptance of plutonium in the civilian nuclear industry.
(Emphasis added.)

Resisting the Plutonium Economy

Long-time readers of Atomic Insights will recall several posts over the years about the pitched battle against the “plutonium economy” that started sometime in the early 1960s. The battle began after the Glenn Seaborg-led Atomic Energy Commission issued a report pointing out how fast breeder reactors–along with thermal breeder reactors using U-233 and Th-232–could provide enough fissile material to fuel nuclear power plants for hundreds to thousands of years. Those plants would be able to provide as much power as human society could ever desire.

For most of the scientists and engineers involved in producing the report, and for many of the far-sighted optimists that read it, that was a tremendously exciting and positive prospect.

It didn’t please everyone. Though Seaborg’s report did not predict fission would replace all combustion — recognizing that there are a number of specific power consumers that are not well suited to using fission reactors — its message still must have scared the bejesus out of people that were prospering in the existing Hydrocarbon Economy.

They had to recognize that a plutonium economy could both flood the energy markets they considered to be “theirs” and would relegate hydrocarbon fuels to shrinking niches of the lucrative enterprise of powering society.

Of course, resisting the plutonium economy by clearly stating that it would harm the fossil fuel business was, even in the early 1960s, a strategy that would fall on deaf ears. Though people appreciated the mobility, indoor climate control, refrigeration, manufactured goods and other capabilities enabled by the power released by burning hydrocarbons, they did not love the gigantic multinational corporations that already dominated the system.

Replacement strategies using various tactical elements needed to be devised and employed.

One ingredient used in fighting the plutonium economy was to demonize plutonium, characterizing it as one of the most deadly substances known to man. Though there is an element of truth to that statement if the plutonium is used explosively to rapidly destroy a large city, it is a false claim if simply comparing the material’s chemical or radiological toxicity.

Another ingredient was actively seeking to make plutonium as commercially unattractive as possible. That effort continues, especially among a certain aging clique of Northeast US nuclear “non-proliferation” academics headquartered at Princeton and MIT. Several of the usual suspects signed a letter in September 2015 expressing their continued opposition to using plutonium to produce power.

The latest was mailed Tuesday [September 8, 2015] by more than a dozen prominent former arms negotiators and senior diplomats supporting the conclusions of a report completed last month by the Red Team, a group of industry experts assembled by Moniz to evaluate cost projections and alternatives to the MOX project.
…
The signatories included former nuclear arms negotiators Robert Einhorn and Robert Gal­lucci; former ambassadors Thomas Picker­ing and Joseph Nye; former White House director for arms control and former Pentagon and intelligence official Henry S. Rowen; former head of the Carnegie Endow­ment for International Peace Jes­si­ca Matthews; former Nuclear Regulatory Commission members Peter Bradford and Victor Gilinsky; National Medal of Science winner Richard Garwin, a designer of the first hydrogen bomb; and nuclear policy experts Henry Sokolski, Frank von Hippel, S. David Freeman and Plough­shares Fund president Joseph Cirincione.

Amusingly, the letter was addressed to one of the longtime thought leaders of the Northeast non-proliferation clique — Dr. Ernest Moniz. He is currently serving as the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Moniz, who has been testifying for the past several years that the MOX project is too expensive, was deeply involved in creating the framework that made the current MOX morass almost inevitable.

After his 2013 appointment, Dr. Moniz selected another Cambridge, MA based non-proliferation proponent, Kevin Knobloch, formerly the President of the Union of Concerned Scientists, to be his office gatekeeper, a job with the formal title of Chief of Staff. Between the two of them, they have found wonderful positions from which to ensure the realization of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Among their other tasks, they’ve spent part of the past 30-40 years asserting that turning Pu-239 from weapons into MOX for light water reactors is more expensive than simply enriching natural uranium and producing conventional low-enriched uranium fuel.

They’ve also cooperated in the effort to push a potential more valuable reuse option — metal alloy fuel for fast reactors — off the table.

Since they have made sure that their often-repeated predictions over the years have come true they are now claiming that the only remaining plutonium disposition option is similar to one that they have wanted to pursue for more than two decades. Instead of abiding by the mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle, they want to mix the material with a diluent whose composition is classified and bury it deep underground without allowing any of the potential energy to enter into the world market.

Getting rid of the 34 tons covered by the 2000 vintage Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA) in this manner is just a beginning; it will establish a precedent for throwing away all plutonium, at least in the U.S. Obviously, the anti plutonium clique wants us to conclude that if it is too expensive to use plutonium that is already nearly pure before it is even put into a fuel cycle, then it would be even more expensive to devise and implement a fuel cycle that begins with used fuel.

Recycling used fuel would require several additional steps compared to using material that is already separated.

In 1998, DOE Adamant About NRC Regulation

Using the logic that the MOX facility would be producing fuel for NRC regulated commercial reactors, the Clinton Administration’s DOE leadership — specifically DOE Secretary Bill Richardson, Deputy Secretary Elizabeth Moler, and Under Secretary Ernest Moniz — made the case that a MOX facility should be built and operated to NRC standards and should undergo an NRC licensing process.

On April 3, 1998, they sent Howard Canter, Director of DOE’s Office of Fissile Materials Disposition, to a meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to explain the proposal. An experienced project manager would run and hide from an assignment to attempt to build anything under the regulatory framework that was discussed that day.

No contractor would touch it on anything but a “cost plus fee” pricing basis. Here are a few illuminating quotes.

Canter: Based on a great deal of internal discussion in the Department, which has included the Under Secretary and the Deputy Secretary, there is one major unresolved issue, and it really centers around whether or not we will get legislation this year. How do we get going in the event we do not have legislation, and do we need legislation? So there are many questions.

DOE wants to issue this RFP and desires to moves towards NRC regulation and licensing. The Deputy Secretary was very adamant upon this yesterday, that this will be a licensed facility. But we are in some difficulty because we can’t issue the RFP without reaching some agreement on the NRC regulatory role and how it will start. The RFP has been prepared and it was totally approved, ready to go out the end of February on the basis of NRC being the regulator on this. However, we have got to make sure that we allow for this period of transition in the start-up period, so we will have to make some changes to that.
…

The Department does want to go to NRC regulation on this. And the other things is we don’t want to mix it up with the much wider issue of external regulation of DOE. It is not — this is not a pilot project or something having to do with that program, although there will be a lot that is learned out of this from that program.

There are significant differences. Some of the reasons are that it is a private contractor, not a M and O contractor. We have even looked at such issues as who would own the facility. We have some options there. We can even consider the idea of leasing the facility, once it is created, back to the contractor, and a number of things to make this very clear how this would work, and very clear who has the NRC authority.

I agree with Commissioner McGaffigan that we do not want to end run the Congress on this thing. There is significant interest in the Congress. A number of the staff members have contacted me and they may be off writing their own legislation on this. In fact, I know, I think, of one case on the Senate side where they may be doing that right now.
…
One of the things that we are concerned about is dual regulation and dual oversight. In fact, there is even the potential for triple oversight here if we are not careful and plan this out properly between DOE exercising a degree of oversight, the NRC staff providing some oversight, and maybe even the Defense Board. And I think that would be a lot of confusion and, essentially, a disaster if we had that.

After substantial questioning by commissioners and attempts to answer by Mr. Canter, Commissioner Diaz summed it up pretty well.

COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And a second comment — you know, just for the record — there is probably, you know, one regulatory structure that can be created that is more cumbersome and more complex than the DOE and the NRC, and that is a mix — DOE and NRC.

As a matter of historical record, the construction permit for the MOX facility was issued in March 2005 and construction began in 2007 with a completely different contractor consortium than the one that won the design contract based on the 1998 solicitation.

MOX Project Status

No reasonable observer reviewing the current status of the MOX project could fail to conclude that the project is in trouble. Nearly $5 billion has already been expended; it costs about $350 million per year to keep the project treading water. Even at that level, the workforce is perpetually worried about continued employment.

Secretary Moniz likes to imply that the contractor has mislead the government about costs, that it continues to underestimate completion costs, and that the only remaining alternative to increasing spending to the level of a billion dollars per year for the next several decades is to terminate the project.

There have been a number of studies, some funded by the government, others funded by MOX services, the consortium of contracting companies building the facility. Here is a quote from the Executive Considerations section of the Plutonium Disposition Program Red Team Report.

The current lack of sustained funding for the MFFF project illustrated in Table 1, which shows planned (based on the MOX Services 2012 BCP) versus actual funding, has created an environment of intense uncertainty, ultimately manifesting itself through project inefficiencies and strained relationships between DOE and the contractor. This uncertainty has in-turn led to a lack of workforce confidence in program stability, resulting in low levels of staff retention (exacerbated by loss of the most qualified
workers), and low morale in the remaining workforce.
…
The downward performance spiral is accompanied by an upward cost escalation spiral that would eventually make DOE’s path-forward decision for them, but only after a great deal of money has been wasted. Project surety would instead lead directly to increased staff retention, resulting in reduced recruitment and training costs, increased ownership, and enhanced overall project performance. Should the MOX option be chosen for continuation, it is vital to create and sustain an adequate and stable funding profile. Indeed, consistent support will be vital for any path forward.

Aside: Dr. Moniz commissioned the Red Team (pg. A-3). It was largely made up of contractors employed in the DOE’s national laboratory system (pg. B-1) whose continued income depends partly on providing the answers that the Secretary wants to hear. Their August 2015 report is marked with “For Official Use Only,” which means that non governmental observers like me are not supposed to see it. I’ll leave it to the questioning attitudes of Atomic Insights readers to pose guesses about the source of the leaked document. Hint: Look at the URL where it is posted. End Aside.

Though DOE summarizes the Red Team’s conclusions by asserting that it supports their assertion that continuing the MOX program under the currently projected funding profile of ~ $500 million per year is significantly more expensive than the hypothetical costs of the dilute and dispose option, it doesn’t seem to recognize its own responsibility for creating the mess, first by establishing an onerous and complex licensing process.

Partly as a result of that process, the contractors produced an almost unworkably complicated design. The on-off-on-off mission and funding has helped to create a hostile, uncertain work environment that has been abandoned by many of the best workers. According to the Red Team report, the remaining workforce seems to spend more effort in oversight and project controls than in completing constructive tasks.

Contractual enhancements may also enable a reduction of burdensome oversight and indirect costs associated with this kind of counterproductive relationship between DOE and the contractor.
…
Implementing project management reforms, providing for incentive fees (based upon jointly negotiated performance outcomes) and ultimately reducing the amount of daily oversight and transactional interactions between the DOE field element and the MOX Services contractor could result in meaningful cost savings.

Final thoughts: As currently funded and overseen by DOE, the MOX Project is expensive and is at a high risk of failure. It might be salvageable, but only with a tripling or quadrupling of annual appropriations in the near term along with a major overhaul of the project management structure and environment to get the project completed and operating expeditiously. Small annual funding requests might be easier to get through Congress, but they invariably add cost and stretch project completion.

The Department of Energy helped to establish a situation that would guarantee that the project could not succeed.

The problem for the people who have to determine where to go from here is that the alternative solution being proposed would depend on the same kind of management, requires changes in law that have not yet been submitted, would require the agreement of at least two state governments that have no real incentive to accept the new plan and would require the Russian government to agree, in writing, to a disposal method that they have been opposed to accepting for the past 20 years.

Since the money that is being expended on MOX comes from the defense budget, the Russians have strong incentives to reject a new deal whose primary selling point is a lowered cost for the U.S.

Paraphrasing Senator Graham in his most ironic voice, other than those obstacles the alternative plan seems okay.

There are alternative courses of action that have the potential to provide a better outcome, but I’ll save those for another day.

Filed Under: Atomic politics, Breeder Reactors, Economics, Fossil fuel competition, Fuel Recycling, Politics of Nuclear Energy

Sad-ending story of EBR-II told by three of its pioneers

August 24, 2015 By Rod Adams

During the period between 1961 and 1994, an extraordinary machine called the Experimental Breeder Reactor 2 (EBR-II) was created and operated in the high desert of Idaho by a team of dedicated, determined, and distinguished people.

In 1986, that machine demonstrated that it could protect itself in the event of a complete loss of flow without scram and a complete loss of heat sink, also without a scram. Those tests were conducted carefully, with an expanded supervisory and operating staff while being witnessed by dozens of internationally respected scientists and engineers.

A few weeks later, at a nuclear power plant behind the Iron Curtain, a small, poorly led operating crew made up of people with little nuclear power plant experience conducted an ill-conceived experiment to see how long the steam turbine at a nuclear plant would keep spinning with enough momentum to supply electricity after the reactor was tripped. Before conducting the turbine momentum test, plant operators inadvertently — or purposely — put the reactor into its most unstable possible state.

That reactor blew up and caught fire. It stole the world’s attention away from the experiments at EBR-II proving that nuclear reactors could be designed to be automatically safe using well-developed physical principles. One result of the attention-getting explosion was to begin a long period of visceral distrust of nuclear energy. In too many cases, the distrust has been extended to all of the people who have devoted their professional lives to understanding, developing, building and operating the technology.

Instead of being reassured by the highly successful, extensively witnessed tests in the open and free United States, the world was subjected to overblown scare stories and dire future predictions as the result of events at a reactor in the opaque, somewhat mysterious world of the Soviet bloc.

Instead of moving steadily towards a future society supplied with virtually unlimited power from emission-free nuclear fission energy, the world has experienced nearly three decades of increasing dependence on natural gas, coal and oil. Those decades have seen periods of incredible transfers of wealth from the world’s energy consumers into the pockets of the world’s fossil fuel producers as people have been told that supplies of low cost fuel were running out.

Fossil fuel exports to European nations frightened away from nuclear energy by the events at Chernobyl have been a primary source of revenue for Russia, the dominant member of the former Soviet union. Control of the world’s fossil fuel markets has been a major source of power, wealth, and conflict with numerous U.S. companies in the hydrocarbon and military equipment industries accumulating substantial, sustained profits.

In 1994, the U.S. Senate — following the lead of Senator John F. Kerry and President Bill Clinton — decided to eliminate all funds for operations and research associated with the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project. The vote was close, only 52 senators, a small majority, voted in favor of removing the funds.

That complete nuclear power plant and fuel cycle project included the EBR-II reactor. During President Clinton’s 1994 State of the Union address, he had characterized the valuable research being conducted on advanced nuclear energy systems as an unnecessary waste of money that should be stopped as part of a program of spending reductions.

Below is a poignant piece of recorded history told by three leading members of the team.

Spoiler alert — you know you are a problem-solving patriot if you are moved by John Sackett’s final soliloquy.

Making a Contribution: The Story of EBR-II (Full Version) from ComDesigns, Inc. on Vimeo.

Note: The above video was recorded not long before EBR-II was demolished. A sadly ironic end of the tale is that the funds for the destruction came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Somehow, it doesn’t seem right that the Department of Energy chose to use funds from a program that was supposedly designed to help America recovery from a terrible recession to destroy a machine that should have been proudly preserved as an inspiration for its prosperous future.

Filed Under: Advanced Atomic Technologies, Atomic history, Atomic Pioneers, Atomic politics, Breeder Reactors, Fuel Recycling, Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors, Politics of Nuclear Energy, Pro Nuclear Video, Technical History Stories

Integrating six decades of learning about fast reactors

May 29, 2015 By Rod Adams

I learned some important new concepts yesterday from two of the leaders of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project – John Sackett and Yoon Chang. Among other things, they informed me — as a member of a group of about 35 other attendees at a workshop titled Sustainable Nuclear Energy for the Future: Improving Safety, […]

Filed Under: Advanced Atomic Technologies, Atomic Pioneers, Breeder Reactors, Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors

How do metal alloy fuel fast reactors respond to rapid reactivity insertion events?

February 17, 2015 By Rod Adams

Update: (Posted Feb 21, 2015 at 7:22) The title has been modified after initial discussion indicated it was incomplete. Other related updates are in blue font. Fast neutron spectrum reactors offer one answer to the trump question that is often used to halt informative discussions about using more atomic energy to reduce our excessive dependence […]

Filed Under: Breeder Reactors, Fuel Recycling, Plutonium

Slowly accelerate fast reactor development

February 4, 2015 By Rod Adams

In one corner are people who are certain that breeder reactors that can effectively use the earth’s massive supply of fertile isotopes — thorium and uranium 238 — should be pursued as rapidly as possible with the assistance of prioritized government funding. In the other corner are people who are just as certain that those […]

Filed Under: Atomic politics, Breeder Reactors, Fuel Recycling

Russia continues sustained fast breeder reactor effort

June 30, 2014 By Rod Adams

On June 26, 2014, the 60th anniversary of the start of the 5 MWe Obninsk reactor that was the first reactor in the world to routinely supply electricity to a commercial power grid, Russia started up the latest in a series of sodium-cooled fast reactors, the BN-800. This new nuclear plant is an evolutionary refinement […]

Filed Under: Breeder Reactors, Fuel Recycling, International nuclear, Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors, New Nuclear

Reuters Breakout series focuses on China’s interest in thorium

December 20, 2013 By Rod Adams

Reuters is running a series titled Breakout: Inside China’s Military Buildout. Installment number 6 is titled The U.S. government lab behind Beijing’s nuclear power push. The title is misleading; it is not about China’s world-leading, multibillion-dollar program. That program includes 29 large commercial nuclear plants currently under construction. Instead, the article focuses on a $350 […]

Filed Under: Breeder Reactors, Pressurized Water, Thorium, Thorium Reactors

Fantasy Crossfire debate: Ed Lyman versus Rod Adams on fast breeder reactors

November 8, 2013 By Rod Adams

CNN has done a masterful job of seizing the opportunity provided by Robert Stone’s thought-provoking Pandora’s Promise to generate a passionate discussion about the use of nuclear energy — a vitally important topic — at a critical time in American history. The decision makers at that somewhat fading network should be congratulated. Of course, generating […]

Filed Under: Advanced Atomic Technologies, Antinuclear activist, Breeder Reactors, Fuel Recycling, Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors, Plutonium

Hydrocarbon-fueled establishment hates idea of plutonium economy

November 7, 2013 By Rod Adams

In the above clip from a recent interview on CNN’s Piers Morgan, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. describes how Pandora’s Promise advocates that canceling the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project in 1994 was a mistake. RFK Jr., a man from an iconic family that has been a part of the US moneyed Establishment for the better […]

Filed Under: Antinuclear activist, Breeder Reactors, Fossil fuel competition, Fuel Recycling, Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors, Plutonium

Bill Gates describes 4th generation nuclear energy to explain his investment decision

April 3, 2012 By Rod Adams

On March 23, 2012, Bill Gates was interviewed as part of the Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference. There is little doubt that he understands the technology and the opportunity. My main question is why he is not investing more in order to drive the technology even faster. After all, he is one of the world’s […]

Filed Under: Atomic Advocacy, Breeder Reactors, New Nuclear, Plutonium, Pro Nuclear Video

Pursuing the unlimited energy dream – history of the Integral Fast Reactor

February 8, 2012 By Guest Author

Photo of Experimental Breeder Reactor I group

Note: Len Koch, whose participation in nuclear energy research started in the 1940s, wrote the below open letter to colleagues who are striving to restore interest in the progress that they made in research and development of the Integral Fast Reactor during the period from 1954-1994 the year that President Clinton and Hazel O’Leary, his […]

Filed Under: Breeder Reactors, Fuel Recycling, Guest Columns, Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors, Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Plutonium, Technical History Stories

Cloistered nuclear scientists needed Sun Tzu’s advice – “Know your enemy”

January 10, 2012 By Rod Adams 18 Comments

I just received my copy of Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor. The complex history of a simple reactor technology with emphasis on its scientific basis for non-specialists by Charles Till and Yoon Il Chang. There is no doubt that it is going to be a fascinating read, but I had to […]

Filed Under: Breeder Reactors, Fossil fuel competition, Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Categories

Join Rod’s pronuclear network

Join Rod's pronuclear network by completing this form. Let us know what your specific interests are.

Recent Comments

  • David on Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked
  • Rod Adams on Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked
  • David on Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked
  • Rod Adams on Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked
  • paul wick on Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked

Follow Atomic Insights

The Atomic Show

Atomic Insights

Recent Posts

Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked

Nuclear energy growth prospects and secure uranium supplies

Nucleation Capital’s Earth Day in Atherton

Atomic Show #296 – Julia Pyke, Director of Finance Sizewell C

Solar’s dirty secrets: How solar power hurts people and the planet

  • Home
  • About Atomic Insights
  • Atomic Show
  • Contact
  • Links

Search Atomic Insights

Archives

Copyright © 2022 · Atomic Insights

Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy