Kansas City Plant officials have established plans to ensure that non-nuclear components needed to support the stockpile are available throughout the relocation to the plant’s new home at the newly constructed National Security Campus,
a new Office of Inspector General report concludes, though the review did identify one issue “that could impact” planned production. “Our review established that the Plant had started planning for requalification of manufacturing processes to be used and parts to be manufactured at the Campus. We observed, however, that some of the Engineering Evaluation Plans used to evaluate processes or parts for requalification were missing information and will need to be updated on a schedule which meets production requirements. Failure to do so could potentially delay the Plant’s ability to deliver critical qualified parts to other NNSA sites,” the report concludes.
Notably, the IG report says that according to a Plant official, “the exactness or precision of the details in the Engineering Evaluation Plans can be modified at any time throughout the requalification event. The same official also stated that Requalification Readiness Assessments are currently underway at the Plant to identify execution concerns and that revisions to Engineering Evaluation Plans are likely. According to Kansas City Field Office officials, they are monitoring the Plant’s performance to ensure delivery of parts to support the nuclear stockpile and that Engineering Evaluation Plans with missing information are not a concern at this time.” The IG added, though, that “in our view, any change to the Engineering Evaluation Plans that the Plant is not prepared to execute because it did not have the complete, production-ready processes could delay the Plant’s ability to deliver qualified parts to other NNSA sites.”
