Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
6/6/2014
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.—The National Nuclear Security Administration is moving forward with a plan to scale back the Uranium Processing Facility, heeding the advice of a Red Team headed up by Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason. The Red Team recommended that the agency—facing a ballooning price tag for the facility and the need to get out of the Y-12 National Security Complex’s 9212 complex by 2025—focus on a pared down approach to the project, utilizing existing facilities as much as possible and constructing smaller modules to house some enriched uranium production work. "Basically we really appreciate the report that Thom Mason and his team put together," NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz told NS&D Monitor on the sidelines of the Tennessee Valley Corridor National Summit, held here this week. "It makes a lot of common sense, this moving from a big box approach to a more distributed or modular approach."
The NNSA adopted that approach at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, when the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility proved to be too expensive. It began to be clear that the agency would have to look at scaling back UPF when the Department of Defense’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation group concluded last year that UPF would likely cost more than $10 billion—and as much as $19 billion under certain scenarios. Previous estimates put the high end of the project’s price tag at $6.5 billion.
Approach ‘Seems to Make Imminent Sense’
Former acting NNSA Administrator Bruce Held asked Mason to examine a scaled-down version of the project, and the Red Team delivered its report in April, just as Klotz was taking over as the head of the NNSA. "It seems to make common sense to me coming to this relatively recently that if you have existing space that can be repurposed or used to conduct some of the operations you want to get out of you would want to explore that," Klotz said. "It also seems to make common sense that if you have different types of activities, some of which require the highest level of security and safety margins and therefore drive the highest cost per square foot, if there was some way you would separate those functions out from functions that have lower security margins or safety margins, that you would want to separate those to build a building that costs less per square foot because of the differences. That all seems to make imminent sense. That’s the approach that’s being adopted at Los Alamos for getting out of CMR and I think it’s the approach we’ll take to get out of 9212."
UPF Federal Project Director John Eschenberg confirmed that there would likely be two modules built for UPF, but he cautioned that the project was still at the beginning stages of pivoting toward a new scaled-down strategy. Klotz said a working group has been established to examine how to implement the Red Team’s recommendations. "That’s what we’re doing," he said. "We’re not done. I can’t predict exactly when we’ll have it done but we’re doing it with a matter of some urgency. This is a very, very important project to us and we want to move forward."
UPF Project Team Trimmed to 525
Eschenberg confirmed that the project’s design team had been trimmed to about 525 workers as work has slowed, down from about 665 employees at the end of April. That has forced the four companies leading design teams that support the UPF project—URS, Jacobs, CH2M Hill, and Merrick—to pull back its employees in recent weeks. "Not only is it prudent but we just don’t have that level of design work," Eschenberg said. "We’ve right-sized our design team to a volume that I’m very, very comfortable with. It puts us in a position as we put decisions in front of leadership to be made we can execute and get back on track for delivery. If you work your way back from our end date of 2025 we have no days to waste and we’re all very sensitive to that."
Because of the newness of the decision, Eschenberg said he was unsure how far along the team is in the new design. "We’re not done that analysis yet. We are so focused on repositioning and redirecting our designers. We will know the answer to that in time but today our focus is on developing a path forward." During his speech at the summit, Klotz confirmed that much—but not all—of the design for the facility would not be usable for the new approach. In recent months, the project has focused on work with a high likelihood of moving forward, like technology development, utilities and road work, and safety and environmental studies, Klotz said. "These preconstruction measures will readily carry over," he said. "Some will not.
Project Management Changes Likely, Too
Klotz said the NNSA was also leaning toward accepting another of the Red Team’s major recommendations: to create a headquarters position with responsibility over enriched uranium issues like UPF, taking control of the project out of the hands of the NNSA’s Office of Acquisition and Project Management. The Red Team report suggested that the federal management structure of major NNSA projects has created confusion about requirements, with the Office of Defense Programs and other program offices often at odds with APM over requirements. "Given the culture that I come from, we generally separate any major project, whether it’s a procurement program or it’s a construction project, into those that define the requirements and those that actually do the blocking and tackling associated with acquisition or construction," said Klotz, a retired Air Force lieutenant general. "I think it is important we identify an individual who knows where all the pieces and parts associated with what the requirements are for our enriched uranium strategy going forward just as it is for plutonium or tritium or anything else we’re doing."
He said it would be valuable for officials in charge of completing a project to "know who to go to if there are questions about what the trade space is, what the potential technologies are that can be inserted, what the footprint is for those particular types of technology, how far along they are in terms of technological readiness or manufacturing readiness. Those sorts of things." He said that work has been done, but it’s been "dispersed" among a lot of different offices with a stake in the project. "I think it’s useful to have one person that you go to in NNSA headquarters and say we have an issue or question that we need resolution on," he said. "That person will still have to reach out to the laboratories, to the plants, to other elements of NNSA in order to draw that together, but at least [NNSA Production Office Manager] Steve [Erhart] and John [Eschenberg] know who to call to get that process started."
Klotz said he hoped to have someone in that position by the end of the summer. "The first challenge would be to identify someone because it will take a very skilled and talented person who understands the technical complexities and how our systems work," Eschenberg said. "But once you get beyond that, it’s what are the roles and responsibilities and how is it that Steve [Erhart] and I would engage."
