As the National Nuclear Security Administration pivots toward a smaller and cheaper way of maintaining its uranium processing capabilities at the Y-12 National Security Complex, acting NNSA chief Bruce Held acknowledged yesterday that about half of the $1.2 billion that has been spent on the Uranium Processing Facility has been wasted. Appearing before the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee yesterday, Held was grilled by subcommittee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) on the troubled project, with Rogers taking issue with the large amount of wasted money on the project. “Some of it is just gone,” Held said. “We need to be frank and honest about that. The M&O contractor who was designing it made some mistakes, so some of that is gone.” Rogers responded, expressing his disgust. “That’s awful,” he said.
Held said he had asked a Red Team headed up by Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason to use as much of the existing design and to “profit from as much of the U.S. taxpayer investment as possible as we look for a smarter and faster way to proceed.” The Red Team is expected to deliver its report next week, and it is widely expected to recommend a scaled back approach to UPF that would be cheaper and get the NNSA out of the 1940s era Building 9212 by 2025. “The big-box strategy has not worked for us,” Held said. “We are finding that the better-sooner rather than perfect-later [strategy] is the way to go. That seems to be working effectively, shows great promise in the plutonium reprocessing facilities up at Los Alamos. And that is the reason why we are taking the same approach down at Oak Ridge with uranium.”