The contractor for the Nevada National Security Site is looking for a miner to expand the underground test space where future explosive plutonium experiments will help verify that refurbished nuclear weapons work as intended, according to a procurement notice released this week.
The eventual subcontractor will “[p]rovide mining equipment and personnel to excavate, stabilize, and develop tunnels for the purpose of providing underground space for future laboratory experimentation at this government facility,” according to a sources sought notice from Honeywell-led site prime Mission Support and Test Services (MSTA)
The mining contract will run “three to five years” and cover, among other things, the the U1a Complex Enhancements Project (UCEP), an MSTS spokesperson wrote in a Thursday email. The NNSA already tests stockpile plutonium in U1a; the agency wants to expand the facility for future tests. The MSTS spokesperson did not say when the company would solicit bids for the contract.
“UCEP will deliver a new underground laboratory that will enable new experimental and diagnostic capabilities and an increased operational cadence of subcritical weapons experiments using plutonium,” according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) budget request for fiscal 2020.
The agency seeks $35 million for the UCEP for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The project could cost roughly $175 million to complete by 2024, the NNSA estimated in its latest budget request. That estimate could change after the agency sets a formal cost and schedule baseline at the Critical Decision 2 project management milestone known. The NNSA estimates the project will reach that milestone by March 2020.
U1a Complex Enhancements Project costs would peak in fiscal 2021 at nearly $50 million, according to the 2020 budget request. The construction project is nested within the NNSA’s infrastructure and operations budget and does not include the cost of developing equipment that will be used in future stockpile testing at the expanded underground lab beneath the Nevada desert.
Among the planned equipment for U1a is a $1 billion X-ray camera, the Advanced Sources and Detectors Project, that will observe subcritical plutonium experiments at the expanded complex. The NNSA estimates the camera will cost $115 million in the 2020 fiscal year, which is more than 40% above the 2019 appropriation of $50 million.
The Advanced Sources and Detectors Project — managed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory and slated to be operational in 2025 — is funded within the NNSA’s Enhanced Capabilities for Subcritical Experiments program: a suite of upgrades for U1a intended to help the complex collect better data about the W80-4 and W87-1 warheads: respectively, the warheads intended for future air-launched cruise missiles and future intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The W80-4 life-extension program entered the development and engineering phase of its life cycle in February, the NNSA announced Thursday. The agency plans to finish building the first W80-4, a refurbished version of a warhead that first deployed in 1982, in 2025.
W87-1, formerly known as the first interoperable warhead, or IW-1, is a longer-term project. In its 2020 budget request, the NNSA estimated it would begin development and engineering on the weapon in 2022. In its 2019 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, published in November, the agency estimated it would produce the first of these warheads — known in November as the W78 replacement — in 2030.
The Nevada National Security Site is the former Nevada Test Site, where NNSA predecessor agencies once conducted full-yield underground and atmospheric nuclear weapons tests.
The U.S. has observed an indefinite moratorium on yield-tests since the early 1990s, but the NNSA continues subcritical explosive tests on stockpile plutonium. These tests, a recent example of which is the Ediza test detonated in February, allow the NNSA to learn whether the fissile material U.S. weapons rely on for their explosive power can still perform as designed as the weapons age.
