Wilson: The President Ignores the Facts

Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) released the following statement after the President’s Budget Request terminated funding to the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication facility (MOX) at the Savannah River Site:

“Terminating funding to the MOX facility is yet another example of the President’s refusal to see the facts. The MOX facility is crucial to our environmental clean-up missions, which produces green fuel, and national security. This decision to eliminate funding to the MOX facility is counterproductive and short-sighted. 

Fact: Support for MOX is bipartisan, with former New Mexico Governor and Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson and former Senator Richard Lugar both advocating for the facility.

Fact: The MOX facility is 70 percent completed.

Fact: Processing plutonium through the MOX facility is the only way to uphold the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, our nuclear non-proliferation agreement with the Russian Federation.

Fact: MOX is the only viable method for eliminating plutonium at this time. Proposed alternatives, like down blending, require the use of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).  WIPP is closed due to safety concerns and has no timeline for reopening. 

Fact: This Administration has attempted to stall or halt progress to the MOX facility multiple times already.

Fact: Closing the MOX facility will make South Carolina a de facto permanent repository for nuclear waste.

The facts are clear—we must protect MOX from misplaced attacks that will have serious repercussions for American families.”

View Wilson’s past statements on MOX here.

Last week, former Senator Lugar said, ‘The facility here in South Carolina is about 70 percent completed, and it’s absolutely vital to the safety of the United States of America, as well as the rest of the world, that we complete it.”

Last year, former Secretary Richardson sent a letter Senator Harry Reid, advocating for completion of the MOX facility to support our agreement with Russia.  “Regardless of vague pledges to ‘talk to the Russians’ – which is all anyone says in Hill testimony everywhere – any non-MOX ‘alternative’ violates our landmark agreement,” he wrote.