Congress may have instituted an earmark moratorium in 2010, but that hasn’t stopped legislators from fighting for parochial projects, even when they’re egregiously wasteful. The continued push for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (or MOX) project is a case study in earmarking under a different name.

Though its cost has skyrocketed, and the Department of Energy has admitted that work should be stopped, MOX’s backers remain undeterred. Lawmakers from South Carolina, MOX’s home state, and the surrounding region continue to press for the project. Recently, Tim Echols, a member of the Georgia Public Service Commission, voiced support for MOX, trotting out the same arguments that have been made for years, and age hasn’t improved them at all.

As I’ve written before, the MOX project is one of the most extravagant examples of government excess. In 2000, The United States and Russia entered into the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, a plan to mutually dispose of at least 34 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium by converting it into mixed oxide fuel for use in nuclear reactors. The theory sounded great: The Department of Energy would build a facility to convert Cold War nukes into fuel for commercial nuclear plants. But it’s become clear in the years since then that the benefits of the project will never justify its cost.

That cost was initially estimated at $1.6 billion by the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department branch in charge of the project, in 2004. By 2012, the projected cost to complete MOX had risen to $7.7 billion. And, as I noted in April, DOE has recently reported that after spending $4 billion on MOX through October 2013, it would cost $25 billion more to complete the project (including life-cycle costs). Not surprisingly, the Energy Department inspector general has since published an audit criticizing the National Nuclear Security Administration’s estimating methodology.

Echols claims that MOX will produce fuel that could be used at nearby Plant Vogtle, or by Duke Energy. Except that the new nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle and in South Carolina aren’t designed to accommodate the fuel MOX will produce. Currently, no reactor can. Though reactors can be retrofitted, the cost of making those modifications would make the plants’ electricity economically uncompetitive. The Department of Energy has agreed to pay for the plant conversion process, and it will subsidize the fuel which would be more expensive than traditional uranium or plutonium stocks.

Despite such bribery, DOE has failed to secure a single customer for MOX’s product. In fact, Duke Energy initially agreed to take some off the department’s hands, but reneged on the offer in 2008. Without anyone actually using the fuel, it’s hard to see how its production will somehow help states lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Even if it were used, it wouldn’t produce any electricity from nuclear power that isn’t already on the grid; the mixed-oxide fuel would simply supplant the use of other nuclear fuels.

The Department of Energy has sensibly reacted to the project’s problems (albeit belatedly) by proposing to put the program into “cold-standby” and consider alternatives. Unfortunately, Congress has rejected the idea. In the House’s energy and water appropriations bill that passed in July, the chamber restored all funding for MOX. The Senate version never made it out of committee, but actually increased the project’s budget to $400 million for the year.

If Congress continues to protect parochial interests as terrible for taxpayers as MOX, greater reform will remain out of reach. Abandoning a local project may not be popular, but making the necessary hard choice to do so would be one step towards progress.