NNSA TO STAY COURSE ON UPF DESPITE DOD CAPE REPORT

The National Nuclear Security Administration will continue to push toward reaching the 90 percent design threshold for the Uranium Processing Facility despite a recent report from the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation group that suggests the facility could cost billions more than the agency’s previous estimate. The recent CAPE report, which said the facility could cost between $10 and $12 billion—and as much as $19 billion under a worst case scenario—recommended the NNSA take a new look at the path forward for the multi-billion-dollar project, which had been estimated to cost as much as $6.5 billion. “DOE is continuing along the same concept phase,” acting NNSA Administrator Bruce Held said yesterday at a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board public hearing in Knoxville, Tenn., on the project and safety at the Y-12 National Security Complex.

Held’s comments came in response to a question from DNFSB member Sean Sullivan about whether the NNSA needed to rethink its strategy for getting out of Y-12’s aging 9212 complex and were the NNSA’s first about the CAPE report. “When we get to the 90 percent level and if it turns out we’re going to be too rich for what any reasonable budgetary projection is, we’re going to have to rescope and rethink,” Held added. “In that rethinking there has to be a very firm position because we can’t slip this thing to the right eternally.” DNFSB members raised concerns at yesterday’s meeting about when the NNSA will be able to move out of 9212. The NNSA is currently planning to complete the move in 2025, but none of the scenarios suggested in the CAPE report had the move being completed any sooner than 2030.