A $100-million-plus project to dramatically increase the computing power available for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s simulated nuclear weapons tests has cleared its final environmental hurdle, the Department of Energy said Tuesday.
In a regulatory document called a supplement analysis, the agency’s National Nuclear Security Administration said “no further NEPA [National Environmental Protection Act] documentation is required” to proceed with the planned four-year, $107-million Exascale Computing Facility Modernization (ECFM) Project.
Peter Rodrik, acting manager of the NNSA’s Livermore Field Office, signed the document on Dec. 17, but it was not published on the Department of Energy’s website until late Tuesday.
The Donald Trump administration requested $3 million for design work on ECFM in fiscal 2018, which began on Oct. 1 of last year. The project budget is slated to ramp up sharply to $40 million in fiscal 2019 and be completed by 2021, according to the White House’s 2018 budget request.
The ECFM Project includes infrastructure improvements at Livermore’s Building 453, which already hosts a great deal of classified computing equipment. It does not include the cost of additional computer equipment.
The NNSA uses supercomputers to simulate nuclear weapons systems and model the effects of age on nuclear components in the existing, aging stockpile.
As part of ECFM, the NNSA will strengthen the building’s structural elements to support the weight of additional computer hardware; upgrade electrical systems, including adding a new substation outside the building to handle the influx of power required for planned exascale computing capabilities; and install additional cooling equipment for the new computing systems.
Lawrence Livermore National Security, a conglomerate led by the University of California and senior industry partner Bechtel National, manages Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the NNSA. The company’s contract includes 19 years, with options, and costs more than $1 billion annually. Work under the deal began in 2007.
