It will take a couple more weeks than earlier thought to certify it is time to begin constructing a new calciner in Building 9212 of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee: the U.S. defense-uranium hub that manufactures the secondary stages for nuclear weapons.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “anticipates approval of the Y-12 Building 9212 Calciner Project CD 2/3 later this month,” a spokesperson for agency headquarters in Washington said by email Tuesday.
Y-12 site operations contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security had earlier said the project needed to reach its Critical Decision 2 and Critical Decision 3 milestone by Monday. The contractor submitted its Critical Decision 2-3 submission package to the NNSA in October 2019, according to a report by the independent federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
The calciner, along with a planned electrorefiner that can purify uranium metal, is one of the pieces of equipment the NNSA needs up and running so the agency can transition defense-uranium operations to the under-construction Uranium Processing Facility from the World War II-era 9212.
The calciner converts low-enriched uranium liquid to a dry form suitable for extended storage. Building the calciner in Building 9212, plus the electrorefiner in Building 9215, is part of the NNSA’s plan to move production of secondary stages out of 9212 and into the Uranium Processing Facility. The new plant is supposed to be finished by 2025 at a cost no more than $6.5 billion.
The two pieces of equipment “will enable the shut-down of the current high hazard wet chemistry process in Building 9212,” according to the 2021 budget request from the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch.
The agency could not immediately say why the milestone — which in DOE project management is the point where construction begins — slid two weeks to the right. The calciner is supposed to be finished in fiscal 2022, with startup slated for fiscal 2023, according to the NNSA’s latest budget request.
Y-12 has had some problems with calciner components in the recent past. The Y-12 prime in 2019 discovered that subcontractor Hicks and Ingle, of Knoxville, Tenn., had made some 40 bad welds in 20 pipe spool pieces intended for the calciner, some of which were already installed. The DNFSB raised the issue last year in a site weekly report, but said at the time that “activities associated with these pipe spool pieces are not expected to impact the project schedule critical path.”
Hicks and Ingle has previously declined to comment about the rejected welds.
The NNSA thinks the calciner project will cost about $105 million to complete. The budget is almost $30 million for 2020, and the agency seeks nearly $24 million for fiscal year 2021, which begins Oct. 1.
