It could be 2020 before the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) incorporates the latest federal earthquake data into the agency’s environmental review of a planned next-generation uranium hub, a spokesperson this week.
As part of a lawsuit brought by environmental and nuclear watchdogs, a federal judge in late September ordered the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch to add the data to its review of the $6.5-billion Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) now under construction at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Days after the order came down, the NNSA said it would comply, although without halting construction of the facility. Bechtel National broke ground on the UPF in 2017 and is building the facility as a subcontractor to Y-12 prime Consolidated National Security — a team Bechtel also leads. The company says UPF will be finished by 2025.
“In the court decision, the judge ordered NNSA to review the seismic analyses used in the [National Environmental Policy Act] documentation under review after finding that there was inadequate consideration of certain new information concerning seismic hazards,” the NNSA spokesperson wrote in a Wednesday email to Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. “We expect the court-mandated review to take several months.”
The new information is a 2014 finding by the U.S. Geological Survey, part of the Interior Department, that the threat of earthquakes in the seismically active Oak Ridge area is greater than had been believed at the time the NNSA began its environmental review of the UPF.
Watchdog groups argued in their 2016 lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee that the NNSA should not have been allowed to proceed with its plans to change UPF’s design from one large building to three smaller structures before considering the 2014 earthquake data.
The plaintiffs wanted Chief Judge Pamela Reeves to halt construction and force the NNSA to conduct a lengthy supplemental environmental impact statement that justified the agency’s decision to proceed with a three-building facility. Reeves, in her September decision, was silent as to whether the NNSA could continue construction of UPF. The judge said only that the NNSA must produce a supplement analysis — a less lengthy type of environmental study that does not require public comment — that includes the updated federal seismology study.
