Good news today from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Shaw AREVA MOX Services on construction milestones achieved at the MOX Project in South Carolina, including 14 million consecutive safe work hours by the more than 2,200 workers employed to construct America’s first nuclear facility in decades. As the AP reports:
Federal regulators have given good marks to construction progress at a South Carolina plant to turn weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear reactor fuel.
Appropriate progress is being made at the mixed-oxide fuel fabrication facility at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a letter sent last month to the company contracted to design, build and operate the plant for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
It was the third year in a row the project has gotten a good report from the regulatory agency, which evaluated activity from October 2011 through the end of last year. In a release heralding the report, Shaw AREVA MOX Services also noted that the more than 2,000 people working on the project have logged more than 14 million consecutive work hours without a lost workday due to injury.
The plant, which broke ground in 2007 and is expected to be completed in 2016, will blend weapons-grade plutonium to create commercial nuclear reactor fuel and would be the first of its kind in the United States. The mammoth concrete and steel structure is being built at a former nuclear bomb plant, where reactors have been shut down for more than a decade.
