The Obama administration has taken the correct approach to the U.S. Dept. of Energy's $7.7-billion Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., which is to freeze the project at its current stage. The delays are endless, the dollars are flying out the window at an alarming rate, and there's no reliable way of knowing whether the end goal can be achieved. That could be said of other federal public works, but none is
as potentially costly as this one. One big concern is that MOX fuel, which is made from weapons-grade plutonium, has never been used on a commercial basis. In other words, there is no proven market yet for the end product, a key assumption of the project.