Staff Reports
WC Monitor
9/11/2015
The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA), longtime critic and watchdog on activities at the Y-12 nuclear weapons site, said it appears almost certain that the government’s current plans for the Uranium Processing Facility will cost at least $10 billion and possibly much more.
That analysis, according to OREPA coordinator Ralph Hutchison, is based on money spent so far on the design of the uranium processing complex at Y-12 and expectations for the likely cost to complete the project after the years-long design work is finally done.
“They are lowballing the actual cost of the project,” Hutchison said in a statement. “And they are withholding information from the public about the money they have already spent. They know there is no way in the world they can build the UPF for $6.5 billion, even though they’ve scaled back the project and shifted major pieces to other lines in the budget. Still the UPF is on a trajectory to cost more than $10 billion.”
The National Nuclear Security Administration’s revisions to the project plan came after a spring 2014 Red Team review headed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason. The team was instructed to develop alternatives, if possible, to the original design plan for the UPF that would have consolidated virtually all of Y-12’s uranium operations in a single large building. The current plan involves added uses of existing facilities, extending their lifetime and shifting some missions to them from older Y-12 production facilities, and constructing a new three-building cluster that would be the center for key processing activities for bomb-grade uranium.
The UPF is considered critical to making uranium operations safe, productive, and efficient for future generations, allowing Y-12 to get out of the age-old facilities — such as the 9212 uranium complex – whose origins date back to the World War II Manhattan Project.
Earlier this year, after completing a “site readiness” project for the Uranium Processing Facility, the NNSA indicated work was continuing, with plans to keep the spending cap under the stated target of $6.5 billion.
But OREPA, which has challenged the project on multiple fronts, including issues pertaining to environmental compliance, suggested the project has not really saved money but rather has divided it up into multiple projects that are not counted as part of the revised UPF, changed plans to divert some costs to other operations, and refused to answer questions about the actual cost estimates.
The NNSA has not released a definitive cost estimate and has said it won’t have an actual baseline expense until the project’s design is 90 percent complete. That, NNSA Administrator Frank G. Klotz said earlier this year, won’t come until sometime in fiscal 2017.
On Tuesday, NNSA would not address the OREPA’s report or address the criticisms and cost claims. “We are declining to comment,” federal spokesman Steven Wyatt said Tuesday.
The activist group said about $1 billion has already been spent on the project’s designs. According to OREPA, the industry standard is for design to be about 3.5 percent of a project’s total cost, or 6.5 percent on particularly complex projects.
The group said that if the design for the Uranium Processing Facility ends up accounting for 10 percent of the project’s cost, given the seeming increasing expense, the final price tag could be $10 billion or more.
The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance not only targeted the NNSA for refusing to release public information on UPF, but also Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. OREPA accused Tennessee’s senior senator of meeting in secret with UPF leadership and not providing “true public accountability” on the multibillion-dollar project.
“And, unfortunately, rather than be a conduit for information, your office has functioned as a shield that insulates NNSA from scrutiny and accountability, providing only vague assurances that their processes have improved and they are on track to complete the new, scaled down UPF on schedule and within a $6.5 billion budget. These assertions defy credulity,” Hutchison wrote in a Sept. 4 letter to Alexander.
In a recent news release that accompanied a trip to Oak Ridge, Alexander said UPF is on schedule, and he said the plan is to spend $300 million to $400 million annually until the work is done.
In response to questions Tuesday, Alexander said via email: “I met with the contractors last week, and they repeated the assurances they have made to made and to other members of Congress that construction of the Uranium Processing Facility’s uranium buildings won’t begin until the buildings are at 90 percent design, the cost will not exceed $6.5 billion, and the project will be completed by 2025.”
In the letter to Alexander, the activist group asked for more details on the basis for the $6.5 billion estimate and cost projections for the rest of the “modernization” of Y-12 as a whole.
