Plans to relocate the Nevada National Security Site’s Las Vegas-area campus are on hold for lack of funds, a National Nuclear Security Administration spokesperson told the Monitor Thursday.
“The move from the North Las Vegas Facility to a new location was evaluated…because it was identified as a project that could potentially occur in the next five years,” a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) spokesperson, wrote in an email to the Monitor. “However, due to funding considerations, the proposed move of the NNSS [Nevada National Security Site] North Las Vegas facility to northwest Las Vegas is not supported at this time.
NNSA had been mulling the move for some time. Earlier this year, in an updated environmental review of the Nevada site, the agency released more details about the northwest Las Vegas site that could have replaced the existing North Las Vegas campus, a satellite office about 65 miles southeast by road from the test site.
In 2022, the agency put out a request for information about moving the existing campus further west.
“The inefficiently designed campus layout, the oversized property, and its portfolio of outdated buildings… inadequately support the current NNSA mission,” January’s environmental review said, referring to buildings in the North Vegas campus that were over 50 years old.
According to the document, the new Northwest campus would be about 12 to 15 miles northwest of the existing North Las Vegas campus. Construction would begin in 2026, take approximately three years to complete, and require about 400 construction workers.
The location of the campus would require a maximum of 40 acres, and about 300,000 to 800,000 square feet of building floor area.
Jill Hruby, head of NNSA, last met with NNSS to discuss this relocation in February at a Nevada Site-Specific Advisory Board meeting.