New Lithium Processing Facility Will Cost Up to $1.65B, NNSA Says

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s said Thursday its next-generation Lithium Processing Facility, needed to produce tritium for future nuclear weapons programs, will cost $955 million to $1.65 billion to build by 2031.

The official baseline is higher than the rough cost estimate of $720 million that the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon agency penciled into its 2020 budget request, and a little later than the 2027 construction end-date projected at the time.

Congress approved a little more than $30 million for the project in the 2020 fiscal year that started Oct. 1. In its budget request, the NNSA estimated construction would start in the 2021 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans to build the Lithium Processing Facility on the site of the old Biology Complex at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The “mouse house” is currently being demolished by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.

The new Lithium Processing Facility will take over work currently done in the 325,000 square-foot, 1940s-vintage Building 9204-2. Lithium is used to make tritium-producing burnable absorbed rods, which when irradiated in a nuclear reactor yield tritium. Lithium metal can also be used in nuclear weapons. 

Consolidated Nuclear Security, the Y-12 management prime, will subcontract out some of the construction work on the Lithium Processing Facility. The prime held an industry day for interested parties earlier this month.