The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) believes it can safely continue building the Uranium Processing Facility, and operate it starting this decade, after taking a court-ordered look at federal earthquake data from 2014.
In a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, the U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee last year ordered the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency to use the seismic data from the U.S. Geological Service to prepare a supplemental analysis to a 2011 environmental impact statement about the under-construction uranium hub.
In a draft of that supplemental analysis, published online and dated Thursday, the NNSA said its review of the 2014 seismic data determined that “the potential impacts associated with an earthquake accident at [the Y-12 National Security Complex] would not be significantly different” than those the agency already considered in 2011, in the Y-12 Final Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for the Y-12 National Security Complex.
In that document, the NNSA said “minor to moderate damage could typically be expected from an earthquake” at Y-12.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit — the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and the Natural Resources Defense Council — argued the agency should have prepared a supplemental environmental impact statement after formalizing in 2016 a decision to split the manufacturing hub for weapons second stages into three buildings from one. A supplemental environmental impact statement involves a mandatory public comment period and could conceivably take years to prepare, compared with months for a supplement analysis.
The groups sought to delay construction of the Uranium Processing Facility. However, the NNSA continued building the facility after Chief Judge Pamela Reeves handed down her order.
The plaintiffs said a construction pause was implicit in Reeves’ order, but the judge never did. The NNSA hopes to finish construction by December 2025 at a cost of no more than $6.5 billion.
Meanwhile, UPF construction continues even as COVID-19 cases climb across the NNSA nuclear complex.
