Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) took the head of the House Armed Services Committee along on a tour of the Y-12 National Security Complex and its Uranium Processing Facility last week.
Fleischmann’s office said in a Friday press release that the Tennessee congressman was “thrilled” HASC Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) could join him for the visit.
The Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) will replace aging, Cold War-era uranium-refining facilities at Oak Ridge and produce highly enriched uranium needed to maintain the potency of existing U.S. nuclear warheads. UPF design operations are expected to be 90 percent complete this fall, after which construction can begin.
So far this year, the facility has gotten strong support in Congress, where both House and Senate appropriators have approved the $663 million the White House requested for fiscal 2018 to pay for its development. Thornberry’s House Armed Services Committee likewise authorized the $663 million the White House sought, as did the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The authorization is part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act that both the House and Senate passed by September. However, the two chambers approved different versions of the legislation and must now iron out their policy differences in a bicameral conference that had not happened at press time Monday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
Bechtel National is building the UPF under a subcontract to Y-12 prime Consolidated Nuclear Security. The facility is a critical cog in the nuclear modernization program started under the Barack Obama administration, which as of last year was expected to cost DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) about $300 billion over 25 years.
Bechtel is part of Consolidated Nuclear Security.
DOE says it will finalize a detailed cost and schedule estimate for the Uranium Processing Facility by Sept. 30, 2018 — something Congress ordered the agency to do in 2014. In the meantime, the department has said it can finish UPF by 2025 for $6.5 billion, as long as Congress provides whatever funding the White House requests for the project.
