DOD OFFICIAL: GOV’T ACCEPTING RISK IN DECISION TO DEFER CMRR-NF

The decision by the Obama Administration to defer work on the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility and accelerate work on the Uranium Processing Facility wasn’t an easy or popular one, but it’s one that had to be made, according to a senior Pentagon official. “The fiscal situation forced some hard choices,” John Harvey, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs, said yesterday at the Fourth Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit. “No one is happy with this choice. It’s one of the ones we have. The question we all face when you’re sitting in this job is where do you accept risk in a very tightly constrained budget environment and we’re accepting risk by continuing to operate in those facilities [at Los Alamos National Laboratory] but it’s even more important …to get out of those facilities at Y-12, where we’re actually carrying out uranium operations in a facility that does not meet modern safety standards.”