The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., produced more than 500 kilograms of purified uranium in fiscal 2019, beating its internal target by 12 kilograms, according to recent figures posted on the site’s blog.
The total for 2019 was 512 kilograms of metal purified by the site’s Enriched Uranium Production unit, beating the target of 500 kilograms by roughly one and three-quarters the maximum regulation mass of a bowling ball. The NNSA requires uranium metal for ongoing and planned nuclear weapons refurbishments. Uranium is used in the secondary stages, or canned subassemblies, of nuclear weapons.
The Y-12 team hit the number in the twilight of Building 9212, which by the middle of the decade will lose much of its weapon-related uranium work to Y-12’s under-construction Uranium Processing Facility.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is already plotting the course to move uranium production out of the 1950s-vintage Building 9212, eyeing an industry backstop outside the Y-12 fence to help uranium purification keep up with a nuclear weapons modernization program set for rapid expansion in the 2020s.
BWX Technologies subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services, of Erwin, Tenn., was in line for that work as of last year, when the NNSA announced its intention to negotiate with the company to reserve a slice of the commercially operated facility’s capacity for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
The company will notionally have to step in around 2023, when the NNSA plans to shut down Building 9212’s uranium purification systems. How much uranium Nuclear Fuel Services will produce is part of the NNSA’s negotiations with the parent company.
Consolidated Nuclear Security manages Y-12 and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, under a contract worth about $2 billion annually and set to expire in 2021. The company is a Bechtel National-led team that also includes Leidos, Northrop Grumman and subcontractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
Bechtel alone is building the Uranium Processing Facility under a subcontract to the prime. The NNSA has said the facility will be finished by the end of 2025 at a cost of no more than $6.5 billion.
