A facility the National Nuclear Security Administration is building to remove plutonium from the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., could arrive a little later and cost a little more than thought only a year ago, the agency wrote in its fiscal year 2023 budget request.
Unspecified design changes recommended by site prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions have increased the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) confidence in the design of the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project, but they have also prompted agency to question whether it is “still feasible” to finish building the facility by 2028 at a cost of roughly $620 million.
The NNSA hinted at just such a delay earlier this year in its most recent performance evaluation for the Fluor-led site prime, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions. NNSA wrote in the document that the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project planned for the site’s K-Area was “over budget and behind schedule due to quality issues related to design.”
In the fiscal year 2023 budget request for the Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation office, NNSA said the Savannah River prime will bring in “external design subcontractors” to help fine-tune the disposal project’s final design. The safety related fire protection system is one of the elements requiring improvements, the agency said.
The Surplus Plutonium Disposition project will mix surplus, weapon-usable plutonium — converted to plutonium oxide at the Los Alamos National Laboratory — with a concrete-like grout. The NNSA will then ship the mixture to the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside of Carlsbad, N.M., for final disposal deep underground. The project, which would operate into the 2040s, replaces the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility that the NNSA canceled in 2018.
NNSA has estimated the Surplus Plutonium Disposition program, of which the eponymous project at Savannah River is one cog, is supposed to be able to dispose of roughly 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium at a cost of about $20 billion, NNSA estimates. That compares with $50 billion or so for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
For fiscal year 2023, the NNSA asked for about $72 million to continue building the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project at Savannah River. That’s down by more than half from the $156 million Congress provided for fiscal year 2022 in the omnibus appropriations bill signed in March.
“The decrease reflects the completion of long-lead procurement awards … and the completion of final design work required to support CD 2/3, Approval of Performance Baseline and Start of Construction,” the NNSA wrote in the detailed budget justification for its Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation office.
In DOE project management, CD 2/3 is the milestone at which the agency produces a firm cost and schedule baseline and receives approval to begin construction. In addition to that milestone, the NNSA expects that vendors will complete one of the project’s three gloveboxes in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The agency also expects to take delivery of a diesel generator for the project in 2023.
