Trump will roll the construction of a plant for the recycling of plutonium in the fuel and will spend $19.9 billion on their disposal

Another controversial decision of the White house was recently approved by the U.S. Department of energy (U.S. Department of Energy — DOE) and sent for approval to Congress.

The presidential administration has decided to halt the construction of an innovative plant for processing weapons-grade plutonium into fuel that has already spent more than $7.5 billion, proposing instead to allocate nearly $20 billion on the disposal of waste.

The project «Mixed oxides» (Mixed Oxides — MOX), the construction of which recent years have required South Carolina and Georgia, would allow a qualitatively new level to solve the problem of spent weapons-grade plutonium. Today in the United States is more than 34 tons of this substance.

From a mixture of waste plutonium and uranium oxide is planned to produce a special fuel rods for nuclear power plants. Because plutonium in the overall composition contains only 5% ofsuch rods would be appropriate for the majority of modern nuclear reactorswith a certain level of protection, the authors of the project.

Total cost of innovative plant — as much as $48 billion. Its construction has already spent more than $7.5 billion. Policy of South Carolina claim that almost 70% of the amount needed for the initial startup of the plant. The rest of the funding was planned to obtain in the process — to increase the volume and efficiency of production. Moreover, the company was to provide up 1 thousand jobs.

To abandon the project tried the administration of Obama, but the only team trump took this matter seriously. The Department of energy has proposed to curtail the MOX plant and return to plutonium disposition, pre-mixed with the inert substanceby dumping it in a special sarcophagus at the plant for processing nuclear waste in new Mexico. Disposal of 34 tons of plutonium waste will cost $19.9 billion, or almost twice cheaper than the construction of the MOX plant.

In addition, DOE proposes to use MOX an unfinished object to create on its basis a traditional plant for the processing of nuclear waste, similar to what is in new Mexico. The authorities of Georgia and South Carolina strongly against this turn of events and intend to defend the MOX project.

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