Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
1/17/2014
NNSA Acting Administrator Bruce Held previously expressed his admiration for Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason, calling his work in bringing the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source to completion ahead of schedule and under budget “absolutely brilliant.” And now he wants Mason to help resolve the perplexing issues with the Uranium Processing Facility, asking the ORNL director to head a Red Team to identify and evaluate alternatives to the UPF within the current schedule and budgetary constraints.
Mason doesn’t have his formal assignment at this point, but he said—based on his discussions with Held—that the team’s role will be to identify possible alternatives to the UPF that will work in a “cost-constrained environment.” More specifically, the challenge will be to identify options for modernizing Y-12’s uranium operations within the boundaries of the NNSA’s previously identified cost range for UPF—$4.2 billion to $6.5 billion. “You can do a lot with that,” he said. “You can do a lot that’s a whole lot better than it’s done right now.” The agency said this week that it is looking at alternatives to UPF that would focus on moving the enriched uranium production capabilities currently housed in the 9212 facility (see related story).
Car Shopping and UPF
Mason compared the decision on how to move forward with Y-12 modernization to his personal deliberations on how he’s going about choosing a new car. He currently drives as Nissan Leaf and his three-year lease is coming to an end in April. What he’d really like is to get a much-more-expensive Tesla with its 300-mile range. But, in the end, the smart decision is probably to extend the lease and keep driving the Leaf. Both provide transportation to work and neither has any tailpipe emissions.
The question facing the NNSA may be what’s good enough, Mason said. Mason said Held made it clear that the path forward for Y-12 is important to the Department of Energy, and the Red Team will apparently draw on resources throughout the department. “I’m going to be talking to my colleagues at the other 16 national labs to get access to their best technical people,” Mason. Acquiring subject-matter experts from elsewhere in the Department of Energy complex will enable the team to get top expertise as well as people with the security clearances necessary to have access to classified information associated with the nuclear weapons work at Oak Ridge. Mason made it clear that the Red Team will not be another review of UPF because that’s been studied just about every way possible.
‘A Fresh Set of Eyes’
This will be a look at other ways of getting things done, and it won’t be framed specifically about replicating individual facilities at Y-12, he said. It will be more about identifying the mission requirements and how they can be accomplished, he said. Mason said the Red Team will take a look at all the requirements that were previously included in developing the UPF and see if indeed they are really required. “The idea is to have a fresh set of eyes,” he said.
UPF has been billed as an ultra-modern facility that will incorporate new technologies for doing the work and implement state-of-the-art equipment to maximize worker safety. Among the potential items to be looked at may be the broad use of gloveboxes in UPF. “The reality is that Y-12 has been doing a lot of things in exemplary fashion for 70 years and doing them without gloveboxes,” Mason said. “Obviously, under modern understandings, you’ve got to make sure you’re doing things safely in a way that protects workers. But you can wind up spending a lot of resources mitigating small risks if you’re not careful.”
A Cutback on Uranium Recycling?
Another target area may be the amount of uranium recycling that’s necessary in this current day and age. “How much recycling do you have to actually do?” Mason said. “Maybe it’s less important to recycle than [a time in the Cold War] when every atom was a precious resource that could go into a weapon.” Mason said it’s important to challenge assumptions. When he was directing the development and construction of the Spallation Neutron Source, Mason said he always had to say “no” two or three times to project personnel who would come in and say they needed more money.
By the third time someone came in with a request, there usually was a much better and cost-effective solution, he said. The team apparently will also look at the existing infrastructure at Y-12, Mason said, noting that not all of the missions to be transferred into the UPF are of the same age. “I think reusing existing infrastructure is one way to come at the cost questions,” he said. “So you’ve got to consider that as one of your options.” He noted that ORNL is going through that at this time as part of decade-long modernization program, now revitalizing the 4500 complex that was built in the 1950s. It’s important to look at each facility individually, not just by age, Mason said. Some much-newer facilities at ORNL are “pretty crappy” when compared to some of the older buildings with a good bone structure, he said.
