Energy Secretary Rick Perry this week reaffirmed his department’s commitment to sticking within the cost and schedule guidelines for construction of the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) in Tennessee, given stable funding.
Perry, who was on Capitol Hill repeatedly for a series of hearings on the Energy Department’s fiscal 2018 budget plan, confirmed DOE would build the UPF at the Y-12 National Security Complex by 2025 at a cost of no more than $6.5 billion.
The facility will replace aging existing facilities with a set of buildings housing enriched uranium processing operations in support of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) pointed out Tuesday that the project would require a sharp funding increase in coming budgets to stay on time, and asked Perry if the DOE could still build it within cost.
“The commitment is contingent on predictable and stable appropriations, as requested in the budget,” Perry said during a budget hearing before the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, noting the project remains within its current time and schedule targets. Fleischmann’s office did not respond to a request for clarification on the specific timeline for UPF funding increases.
Construction of the Uranium Processing Facility received $575 million under the omnibus appropriations bill funding the federal government through the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30. The design portion of the project is expected to be 90 percent complete by early fall, at which point construction may officially begin.
Consolidated Nuclear Security, the Bechtel-led contractor managing Y-12 and the Pantex Plant in Texas, is building the UPF.
A “Red Team” review in 2014 settled on the expense and schedule targets following concerns at DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees Y-12, over ballooning costs. The original project plan in 2012 was found to cost up to $19 billion.
The Red Team report said Y-12’s aging Building 9212 is of particular concern, since the building that hosts enriched uranium work must be vacated and the operations transferred to the new facility.
“While it is certainly possible from a budget constraint and physical execution point of view to complete them all by 2025, it will be extraordinarily difficult” without a revised management approach, the Red Team report found.
Perry also touched on a number of other topics during this week’s budget hearings.
On Nonproliferation:
Pressed by Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) about proposed reductions to the NNSA’s nonproliferation budget in fiscal 2018, Perry said much of that was the natural result of successfully completing projects abroad and does not necessarily indicate continual reductions in the future. He separately said that continual engagement with the International Atomic Energy Agency is important.
On Cooperation With Russia:
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), on Tuesday at the House hearing, encouraged re-engagement with Russia over that nation’s withdrawal last year from the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement.
The deal requires both nations to eliminate 34 metric tons of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site was intended to process the U.S. material, but the Trump administration has proposed to kill the project in favor of a separate disposal option.
“We’ve got to talk to the Russians at some point in time,” Simpson said. Perry later said the Energy Department has not had any discussion with the Russians over MOX and the PMDA.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) highlighted decades of scientific cooperation between Energy Department and Russian scientists, including through initiatives such as the Cooperative Threat Reduction program.
“Once we get through the current political turmoil . . . residues of cooperation on spent [nuclear] material can serve, I think, as a proxy to potentially rebuild relationships,” he said.
On a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Capability:
Perry said it is in the interest of national security to have a domestic uranium enrichment capability, particularly since nuclear warhead life-extension programs might require it in the future. He added, though, that “we have a fairly robust stockpile at this particular point in time.”
This comment comes as the nuclear energy industry and some lawmakers push for re-establishment of a domestic enrichment capability that has not existed since 2013, when the gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah, Ky., was shuttered.
