Crews finished building the structure of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s next-generation, secondary-stage factory in September and the compound’s electrical hub is scheduled to be completed in around January, the site prime contractor said recently.
The milestone for the Main Process Building, where the most important weapons work at the Y-12 National Security Site will take place, marks a “major shift” for the team, which now turns its focus to the building’s interior, Dale Christenson, the Uranium Processing Facility’s (UPF) federal project director, said last week in a press release.
Inside the Main Process Building, there are still years of work to go before UPF is ready for production by December 2025. Glove boxes need installing and subcontractors have additional work to do on heating, ventilation and fire protection networks, site prime Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) said.
CNS has already ordered all of UPF’s gloveboxes, which the Bechtel National-led team procured “through a variety of vendors,” a company spokesperson wrote Wednesday in an email.
Construction of the Main Process Building — the largest of the three UPF buildings — began in 2018, months after designs hit 90% completion. CNS has said work continued on the project without interruption during the widespread COVID-19 lockdowns of early 2020. The Main Process Building accounts for most of UPF’s construction costs: more than $4.7 billion of an estimated $6.5 billion.
The three-story building will eventually house enriched uranium operations, such as casting and special oxide production, key to manufacturing nuclear-weapon secondary stages for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) upkeep of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Meanwhile, UPF’s Mechanical Electrical Building, another of the three keystone UPF buildings, is headed for Critical Decision-4 submittal by the end of January 2022, in line with a schedule included in NNSA’s 2022 budget request this year, the CNS spokesperson said. Critical Decision-4 is the point in DOE project management where the agency deems a facility ready to operate.
The Uranium Processing Facility is the NNSA’s planned replacement for a Cold War-era enrichment complex anchored by the aging Building 9212. The agency in 2016 decided to split UPF into three buildings, instead of one as earlier planned, arguing the decision would rein in project costs. NNSA now says UPF will cost no more than $6.5 billion to construct and be ready to operate by December 2025.
The plant should be capable of manufacturing a proof-of-concept nuclear-weapon secondary stage around August 2025, the NNSA has said.
CNS will remain on site to finish building UPF, but the NNSA is replacing the team as the prime for Y-12 and fellow production site, the Pantex Plant in Texas. The new contract will have a four-month transition period, leaving NNSA enough time to award the follow-on pact by the end of November and transition CNS off the job by March 31, 2022, when the incumbent’s contract was scheduled to run out.
