Energy Department issues scathing evaluation of nuclear project

[bananas]

Source: Washington Post

<snip>

On Dec. 5, the NNSA completed a scathing evaluation that branded several of the company’s claims about the state of the project “misleading” and “inaccurate.” The agency said CB&I Areva’s claims that the project is 70 percent complete “are patently false.” A separate September 2016 Energy Department report said construction was only 28 percent complete.

<snip>

President Obama tried to kill the Savannah River plant. In the president’s proposed 2017 budget, the administration said it would “pursue a dilute and dispose approach as a faster, less-expensive path to meeting the U.S. commitment to dispose of excess weapons grade plutonium.” It proposed cutting spending to from $345 million to $275 million to begin winding it down.

One of the project’s sharpest critics Tom Clements, director of the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch, obtained the December NNSA assessment through a Freedom of Information Act request. He called the evaluation “devastating.”

“I have never seen an asessment like that. It all but calls them liars,” he said.

The Savannah River project, however, has an important ally in Congress: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has defended this method of converting nuclear weapons fuel. In addition, hundreds of jobs in his state depend on the project moving forward. For a time, Graham held up the confirmation vote on Ernest Moniz as energy secretary over the Obama administratin’s intentions for the Savannah River MOX project.

<snip>

But the Obama administration continued to say the MOX plant at Savannah River wasn’t practical. What started as a $620 million project in 1999 with a 2006 starting date has become a $17 billion project still decades away from a start state. By some estimates, it would require a $1 billion a year appropriation, which the Obama administration said was unlikely at best.

<snip>

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/energy-department-issues-scathing-evaluation-of-nuclear-project/2017/02/28/8af4d11a-fd2c-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html

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Obama and Tom Clements have it right - this is a boondoggle that should be canceled.
Naturally, anti-science Republicans want to keep it alive, because nuclear is magic.
You just can't trust the nuclear industry - or Republicans.

[Mc Mike]

1. Just had a young guy canvasser at my door last week-end.

Not a bad guy, from some new 'grassroots' start up 'environmental' outfit called 'generation atomic'.

I did what I could to disabuse him of the notion that nuclear was green.

[Dorn]

2. Very good point -- nukes are not green... other than their costs

How can a onetime $620,000,000 project turn into a $1,000,000,000 per year ?

[jpak]

3. Tom is an old friend of mine - glad he is still holding their feet to the fire

[lagomorph777]

4. We already have the best nuclear reactor there could ever be.

It's in the sky every day, and it's free. Solar has crossed the threshold and is now cheaper than coal, and waaaaaaay cheaper than terrestrial nuclear.

But you can't cause black lung disease or global warming with solar energy, so the Reputins hate it.