The power substation that will route electricity to the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is finished, the National Nuclear Security Administration said.
The Tennessee Valley Authority designed and built the $60 million substation, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency wrote in a press release on Monday.
Aspects of the substation have irked the Oak Ridge locals, who in 2017 starting fought the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) over plans to run power lines for the substation along a hill called Pine Ridge.
But with the NNSA dead set on finishing the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) by 2025 for $6.5 billion, the agency ultimately had its way — though not without some accommodation for the city, as the local Knoxville News Sentinel reported in 2018.
Bechtel National is building UPF under a subcontract to Y-12 site prime Consolidated Nuclear Security, which Bechtel also leads. UPF hit its CD-3 milestone, the start of construction, in DOE project management, on March 21, 2018. Congress approved the agency’s 2020 spending request of $745 million for UPF as part of a spending package signed before the winter holidays. The project is now in its peak spending years.
By 2025, the NNSA hopes that UPF will be able to replace the Cold War-era Building 9212, which among other things now handles uranium purification and manufacture of uranium-powered secondary stages for nuclear weapons.
