An activist group has initiated a letter-writing campaign aimed at prodding Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn,), chairman of the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, to release more information about plans for the multibillion-dollar Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex. The group hopes the campaign, timed with the looming expiration of the current continuing budget resolution on Dec. 11, will get hundreds of Tennesseans to write to Alexander and ask him to reveal details of his private talks with UPF project officials and Department of Energy management.
“The basic message is simple: We live in a democracy. We have a right to know, and he has a duty to disclose,” Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance coordinator Ralph Hutchison said in a statement distributed this week.
The peace group has accused Alexander of “bankrolling” the project from his appropriations leadership position and holding secret meetings to discuss the future course of UPF, which has been revised and scaled down in an effort to keep the price tag within the previously stated range of $4.2 billion to $6.5 billion. OREPA has strongly opposed construction of the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and suggested the real price tag might ultimately exceed $10 billion.
“Since 2010, two billion taxpayer dollars have been spent designing the UPF bomb plant,” Hutchison said in the statement.
“More than half a billion was written off as wasted when the first plan was scrapped. We are now on the third plan, which has not been formally approved by the Department of Energy, and the money continues to flow to Bechtel (which is managing the project under a subcontract with Y-12 contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security). There is no credible estimate of the total cost of the project. We want to know where the money is going.”
Alexander’s office did not provide a response to the group’s statements.
